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for a couple of days, and I don't see how much can happen until then. My relief will be here soon; when he arrives, perhaps you would like to see the bathyscaphe with me."
    "I should be most interested." Raeker was getting the impression that either the Drommians were a very polite race or Aminadabarlee had been selected for his diplomatic post for that quality. He didn't keep it long.
    Unfortunately, there was a delay in visiting the bathyscaphe. When Raeker and the Drommian reached the bay where the small shuttle of the Vindemiatrix was normally kept, they found it empty. A check with the watch officer - ship's watch, not the one kept on the robot; the organizations were not connected - revealed that it had been taken out by the crewmen whom Raeker had asked to show Aminadorneldo around.
    "The Drommian wanted to see the bathyscaphe, Doctor, and so did young Easy Rich."
    "Who?"
    "That daughter Councillor Rich has tagging along. Begging the pardon of the gentleman with you, political inspection teams are all right as long as they inspect; but when they make the trip an outing for their offspring - "
    "I have my son along," Aminadabarlee remarked.
    "I know. There's a difference between someone old enough to take care of himself and an infant whose fingers have to be kept off hot contacts ..." The officer let his voice trail off, and shook his head. He was an engineer; Raeker suspected that the party had descended on the power room in the near past, but didn't ask.
    "Have you any idea when the shuttle will be back?" he asked.
    The engineer shrugged. "None. Flanagan was letting the kid lead him around. He'll be back when she's tired, I suppose. You could call him, of course."
    "Good idea." Raeker led the way to the signal room of the Vindemiatrix, seated himself at a plate, and punched the combination of the tender's set. The screen lighted up within a few seconds, and showed the face of Crystal Mechanic Second Class Flanagan, who nodded when he saw the biologist.
    "Hello, Doctor. Can I help you?"
    "We were wondering when you'd be back. Councillor Aminadabarlee would like to see the bathyscaphe, too." The nearly two-second pause while light made the round trip from Vindemiatrix to tender and back was scarcely noticed by Raeker, who was used to it; the Drommian was rather less patient. "I can come back and pick you up whenever you want; my customers are fully occupied in the 'scaphe." Raeker was a trifle surprised.
    "Who's with them?"
    "I was, but I don't really know much about the thing, and they promised not to touch anything." "That doesn't sound very safe to me. How old is the Rich girl? About twelve, isn't she?"
    "I'd say so. I wouldn't have left her there alone, but the Drommian was with her, and said he'd take care of things."
    "I still think - " Raeker got no further. Four sets of long, webbed, wire-hard fingers tightened on his shoulders and upper arm, and the sleek head of Aminadabarlee moved into the pickup area beside his own. A pair of yellow-green eyes stared at the image in the plate, and a deeper voice than Raeker had yet heard from Drommian vocal cords cut across the silence.
    "It is possible that I am less well acquainted with your language than I had believed," were his words. "Do I understand that you have left two children unsupervised in a ship in space?"
    "Not exactly children, sir," protested Flanagan. "The human girl is old enough to have a good deal of sense, and your own son is hardly a child; he's as big as you."
    "We attain our full physical growth within a year of birth," snapped the Dromiman. "My son is four years old, about the social equivalent of a human being of seven. I was under the impression that human beings were a fairly admirable race, but to give responsibility to an individual as stupid as you appear to be suggests a set of social standards so low as to be indistinguishable from savagery. If anything happens to my boy - " He stopped; Flanagan's face had disappeared from the screen, and