ate uranium or protein, had to
be independent in thought and action under certain circumstances. The
circumstances were here, here and now in his judgment.

He arrived at the door of the Council chamber, and entered, an
impressive sight in flaming orange and blue uniform.

Four members of the Supreme Council of the Mureess rose solemnly and
inclined their heads in his direction. They were tall bipeds of vaguely
reptilian ancestry, most of their height being body. They stood on
short powerful legs, terminating in flippered feet, and their long arms
were flanged to the second elbow with a rubbery fin. Only four opposed
fingers flexed the hands, but the dome-shaped heads and golden eyes
screamed intelligence as loudly as the bodies shouted adaption to an
aquatic environment. Around the brown torsos, light but efficient
harness supported a variety of instruments in noncorrosive metal
sheaths. All of the instruments had been discreetly examined by
scanning beams and pronounced harmless before any contact had been
allowed.

Across the central table, Sakh Mazechazz, of Lyra 8, leader and captain
of the Survey stared red-eyed at his executive officer. Mazechazz
resembled the delegation far more than he did his own officer, for he,
too, had remotely reptilian forbears. Indeed he still sported a
flexible tail and, save for his own orange and blue uniform, ablaze
with precious stones, resembled nothing so much as a giant Terrestrial
chameleon. The uniforms were no accident. Surveymen wore anything or
nothing as the case called for it, and the Falsethsa admired bright
colors, having few of their own and a good color sense. The gleaming
jewels on Mazechazz's uniform stressed his superiority in rank to
Powers, as they were meant to.

Of the twenty Surveymen on board the _Benefactor_, Mazechazz and Powers
were the only two who most resembled, in that order, the oxygen-breathing
natives of Mureess. That automatically made them captain and executive
officer of the _Benefactor_. The native population saw only the captain
and executive officer of the ship, and only the council chamber. On a
world of ammonia breathers, Mazechazz and Powers would have been
invisible in their own part of the ship providing advice only to the
Skorak of Marga 10, Lambdem, and perhaps Nyur of Antares-bi-12. If a
suspicious native saw an entity with whom he could feel a remote
relationship giving orders to a weird-looking, far more, alien
creature, a fee