ury-model iron curtain. You
know, four of our best native Intelligence operatives have been
murdered in Keegark in the last three months, and six more have just
vanished there."

"Well, I'm going there in a few days, myself, to talk to Orgzild about
this spaceport deal," Blount said. "I'll have a talk with Hendrik
Lemoyne and Colonel MacKinnon. And I'll see what I can find out for
myself."

"Well, let's go have a drink," von Schlichten suggested.

But he kept remembering the falsehood of Gurgurk's indemnity. When the
Ullrans started making a mockery of such things, it was no time for
Harrington's trusting policies. The smell of trouble was suddenly
stronger in his nostrils.

IV

Von Schlichten and Blount entered the bar together. Going to a
bartending machine, von Schlichten dialed the cocktail they had
decided upon and inserted his key to charge the drinks to his account,
filling a four-portion jug.

As they turned away, they almost collided with Hideyoshi O'Leary and
Paula Quinton. The girl wore a long-sleeved gown to conceal a bandage
on her right wrist, and her face was rather heavily powdered in spots;
otherwise she looked none the worse for recent experiences. Von
Schlichten invited her and her escort to join him and Blount. Colonel
O'Leary was carrying a cocktail jug and a couple of glasses; finding a
table out of the worst of the noise, they all sat down together.

"I suppose you think it's a joke, our being nearly murdered by the
people we came to help," Paula began, a trifle defensively.

"Not a very funny joke," von Schlichten told her. "It's been played on
us till it's lost its humor."

"Yes, geek ingratitude's an old story to all of us," Blount agreed.
"You stay on this planet very long and you'll see what I mean."

"You call them that, too?" she asked, as though disappointed in him.
"Maybe if you stopped calling them geeks, they wouldn't resent you the
way they do. You know, that's a nasty name; in the First Century
Pre-Atomic, it designated a degraded person who performed some sort of
revolting public exhibition...."

"As far as that goes, you know what the geek name for a Terran is?"
Blount asked. "_Suddabit_."

She looked puzzled for a moment, then slipped in her enunciator. Even
in the absence of any native, she used her handkerchief to mask the
act.

"Suddabit," she said, distinctly. "Sud-da-a-_bit_." Taking out the
geek-speaker, she put it away. "Why, that's exactly how they