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he snapped.
    Belug flushed red. “War with Kolresh again? It would take you too long to shift gears—to reorganize.”
    “It would not. Our war college, like any other, has prepared military plans for all foreseeable combinations of circumstances. If I cannot come to terms with you, Plan No. So-and-So goes into effect. And obviously
it
will have popular enthusiasm behind it!”
    He nailed the Overman with a fish-pale eye and continued in frozen tones: “After all, your dominance, I would prefer to fight you. The only thing I would enjoy more would be to hunt you with hounds. Seven hundred years have shown this to be impossible. I opened negotiations to make the best of an evil bargain—since you cannot be conquered, it will pay better to join with you on a course of mutually profitable imperialism.
    “But if your stubborness prevents an agreement, I can declare war on you in the usual manner and be no worse off than I was. The choice is, therefore, yours.”
    Belug swallowed. Even his guards lost some of their blankness. One does not speak in that fashion across the negotiators’ table.
    Finally, only his lips stirring, he said: “Your frankness is appreciated, my lord. Some day I would like to discuss that aspect further. As for now, though…yes, I can see your point. I am prepared to admit some of your troops to our ships of the line.” After another moment, still sitting like a stone idol: “But this question of returning prisoners of war. We have never done it. I do not propose to begin.”
    “
I
do not propose to let poor devils of Norrons rot any longer in your camps,” said Rusch. “I have a pretty good idea of what goes on there. If we’re to be allies, I’ll want back such of my countrymen as are still alive.”
    “Not many are still sane,” Belug told him deliberately.
    Rusch puffed smoke and made no reply.
    “If I give in on the one item,” said Belug, “I have a right to test your sincerity by the other. We keep our prisoners.”
    Rusch’s own face had gone quite pale and still. It grew altogether silent in the room.
    “Very well,” he said after a long time. “Let it be so.”
             
    W ITHOUT A WORD, Major Othkar Graaborg led his company into the black cruiser. The words came from the spaceport, where police held off a hooting, hissing, rock-throwing mob. It was the first time in history that Norron folk had stoned their own soldiers.
    His men tramped stolidly behind him, up the gangway and through the corridors. Among the helmets and packs and weapons, racketing boots and clashing body armor, their faces were lost, they were an army without faces.
    Graaborg followed a Kolreshite ensign, who kept looking back nervously at these hereditary foes, till they reached the bunkroom. It had been hastily converted from a storage hold, and was scant cramped comfort for a thousand men.
    “All right, boys,” he said when the door had closed on his guide. “Make yourselves at home.”
    They got busy, opening packs, spreading bedrolls on bunks. Immediately thereafter, they started to assemble heavy machine guns, howitzers, even a nuclear blaster.
    “You, there!” The accented voice squawked indignantly from a loudspeaker in the wall. “I see that. I got video. You not put guns together here.”
    Graaborg looked up from his inspection of a live fission shell. “Obscenity you,” he said pleasantly. “Who are you, anyway?”
    “I executive officer. I tell captain.”
    “Go right ahead. My orders say that according to treaty, as long as we stay in our assigned part of the ship, we’re under our own discipline. If your captain doesn’t like it, let him come down here and talk to us.” Graaborg ran a thumb along the edge of his bayonet. A wolfish chorus from his men underlined the invitation.
    No one pressed the point. The cruiser lumbered into space, rendezvoused with her task force, and went into nonspatial drive. For several days, the Norron army contingent remained in its den,