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write large-talk. They learned a supplementary universal alphabet whose characters turned out to be numbers, allegedly capable of arrangement in combinations that could depict the sounds of any of the uncounted spoken languages of the galaxy. There was also a universal touch alphabet, for species of intelligent life incapable of phonation, and special modifications for species with sundry other handicaps. Darzek found himself gloomily contemplating the problem of communicating with a species that possessed no senses whatsoever.
    “I know of none,” Smith said, with a slight gurgle that Darzek had begun to suspect was a laugh. “But anything is possible. It takes all kinds to make a galaxy.”
    “I believe you,” Darzek said fervently.
    Smith was one of them. He had shed his epidermis as soon as they shed Earth’s Solar System, and he appeared vaguely human in the way a human might look after he’d been run over by a steamroller: flattened out. Immensely broad when viewed from the front, but unbelievably thin in profile. His face was caved in, its features weirdly inverted. The enormous eyes were widely separated and almost on a line with the single, gaping nostril. The mouth was a puckered gash in the chin, the neck a slender pipe. There were no ears or hair. The flesh was of a distinctive hue that Miss Schlupe at once labeled oxygen-starvation blue.
    “If he wants to remove that epidermis, too, it’s all right with me,” she had confided to Darzek.
    Smith added absently, “There are even species that have rather involved communication systems based upon odors, but no one has ever been able to reduce these to symbols.”
    “Thank God!” Darzek exclaimed.
    “You must have a fair mastery of large-talk, and if you remain long on a world you may want to learn the local languages, assuming that you are physiologically capable of doing so. You needn’t worry about the more complicated forms of communication, but you should know about them. For example, a strange male who approaches and touches a female on your world would be guilty of criminal misconduct. In interstellar society the action would be recognized as a search for someone with an understanding of touch speech.”
    “There’d be the same understanding on Earth,” Darzek said, “but the woman probably wouldn’t like what was being said.”
    “I mention this so that if it should happen to Miss Schlupe she would not react in the accepted manner of your Earth women.”
    Miss Schlupe blinked innocently. “I’d take it as a compliment—on Earth or anywhere else.”
    “If all we need to know is large-talk, let’s get on with it,” Darzek said.
    “Large-talk,” Smith agreed gloomily. “And manners and customs and finance and business and practical technology and—and the Council of Supreme is becoming impatient. There is so little time, and you learn so slowly.”
    Finally there was a brief farewell ceremony with Smith, and Darzek and Miss Schlupe drank a toast with the last of Miss Schlupe’s rhubarb beer, which Smith refused to touch. They stepped through a special transmitter hookup to a passenger compartment of a commercial space liner. With that step they crossed their Rubicon. They knew, now, that they could not turn back. They did not even know how to get back.
    While Miss Schlupe curiously explored the compartment’s five compact rooms, Darzek opened his suitcase and took out a thick throw rug. He carefully arranged it in front of the transmitter.
    “What’s it for?” Miss Schlupe asked.
    “It’s a little thing I rigged up before I left. I got to thinking about the implications of life in a transmitter-orientated society, and I decided that I didn’t like some of them. Step on it.”
    Miss Schlupe did so and leaped off hurriedly when a buzzer rasped.
    “I couldn’t sleep if I thought anyone or anything could step into my room without knocking,” Darzek said.
    “Is that possible?”
    “It shouldn’t be, but I’m taking no