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speaker over the cradle. The White Fire was the ship on which the woman and the girl were travelling.
    â€˜She can’t possibly reach the system until four hours after we make the drop,’ I said. ‘No trouble at all.’
    Charlot laughed humourlessly.
    â€˜You’re expecting trouble?’ I asked him.
    â€˜Perhaps,’ he said.
    â€˜Don’t you think you’d better tell us about it?’ said Eve, trying to sound as if she was in charge.
    â€˜Chao Phrya is a difficult world to deal with’
    â€˜So you’ve said,’ I said drily, remembering that he was persona non grata there.
    â€˜Why?’ asked Eve.
    â€˜The Zodiac families are unfriendly,’ he said.
    â€˜Go on,’ I said, as he paused. ‘Tell her the rest. Tell her Chao Phrya is LWA.’
    â€˜Chao Phrya is not covered by the principle of Let Well Alone,’ said Charlot acidly. ‘The Law of New Rome applies on the surface. It’s simply that the people who colonised the world don’t like outworlders coming in. They permit no further immigration. Except for half a dozen representatives of New Rome they won’t even allow embassies from other worlds. They won’t trade, they won’t even communicate unless they’re forced to.’
    â€˜Nobody’s forced to communicate,’ I put in.
    â€˜Be quiet,’ said Eve. ‘Let’s hear this.’
    She was gaining confidence, but she obviously lacked enthusiasm. But I did as I was told.
    â€˜The law requires that the spaceport carry out certain duties with respect to ships in orbit,’ said Charlot. ‘There are certain circumstances under which they cannot refuse permission to land. As time does not permit us to get the full force of the law behind us before the White Fire gets into the system, there may be trouble here. But the restriction should apply equally to both ships. We should both be in orbit when the legal apparatus does manage to get the appropriate messages through to Chao Phrya.’
    â€˜Optimist,’ I commented.
    Nobody took any notice.
    â€˜The reason that the people of Chao Phrya adopt these awkward conventions with respect to outworlders is because they are neurotic isolationists,’ said Charlot. ‘Not one of them has ever left the planet. They have no ships of their own except the Zodiac , and that’s a shrine now, not a ship. They built the port solely to control all communication with the outworlds:’
    â€˜How can they all be neurotic?’ asked Eve.
    â€˜Simple,’ I said, jumping in to steal Charlot’s big line. ‘The Zodiac was a generation ship.’
    Eve didn’t understand. Johnny didn’t say a word, but I knew he was still listening, and that he didn’t understand either.
    â€˜Promised Land,’ I said, my voice reflecting my distaste.
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜Before Spallanzani invented the phase-shift, and long before mass-relaxation, they had spaceships powered by something they called the thrust-cycle process,’ I told her. ‘You probably know them under the name ‘tumblers’—if they teach you any sort of theory at school these days you’ll know why. There was space travel before this new and enlightened age of high velocities, you know.’
    â€˜Subcee drive,’ she said. ‘But....’
    Charlot took over the explanation again. He was better at it anyway. ‘It took the Zodiac four hundred and eighty years to travel from Earth to Chao Phrya. They couldn’t travel at anything like light-speed. Chao Phrya was in the fifth system which they searched for habitable worlds. They turned down two worlds where they could have survived, because they weren’t looking for survival. They were looking for a garden of Eden. A paradise planet. A Promised Land. During all the time that the people lived on that ship—nineteen generations—they supported themselves with promises. They