ay on Uller long
enough, you can. That ought to be good for about eight to ten honorary
doctorates. And maybe a hundred sols a year in book royalties."

"Maybe I'll just do that, general.... What's that, on the little
island over there?" she asked, shifting the glasses. "A clump of
flat-roofed buildings. Under a red-and-yellow danger-flag."

"That's Dynamite Island; the Kragans have an explosives-plant there.
They make nitroglycerine, like all the thalassic peoples; they also
make TNT and catastrophite, and propellants. Learned that from us, of
course. They also manufacture most of their own firearms, some of them
pretty extreme--up to 25-mm for shoulder rifles. Don't ever fire one;
it'd break every bone in your body."

"Are they that much stronger than us?"

He shook his head. "Just denser, heavier. They're about equal to us in
weight-lifting. They can't run, or jump, as well as we can. We often
come out here for games with the Kragans, where the geeks can't watch
us. And that reminds me--you're right about that being a term of
derogation, because I don't believe I've ever knowingly spoken of a
Kragan as a geek, and in fact they've picked up the word from us and
apply it to all non-Kragans. But as I was saying, our baseball team
has to give theirs a handicap, but their football team can beat the
daylights out of ours. In a tug-of-war, we have to put two men on our
end for every one of theirs. But they don't even try to play tennis
with us."

"Don't the other natives make their own firearms?"

"No, and we're not going to teach them how. The thalassic peoples here
in the Equatorial Zone are fairly good empirical, teaspoon-measure,
chemists. Well, no, alchemists. They found out how to make
nitroglycerine, and use it for blasting and for bombs and mines, and
they screw little capsules of it on the ends of their arrows. Most of
their chemistry, such as it is, was learned in trying to prevent
organic materials, like wood, from petrifying. Up in the north, where
it gets cold, they learned a lot about metallurgy and ceramics, and
about forced-draft pneumatics, from having to keep fires going all
winter to thaw frozen food. They make air-rifles, to shoot metal
darts."

The aircar came in, circling slowly over the town on the big rock, and
let down on the roof of the castle-like building from which the
watchtower rose. There were a dozen or so individuals waiting for
them--the five Terrans, three men and two women, from