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Inwardly, Gepta chuckled. How right the admiral was; how much more right he would be. The sorcerer watched Shanga for a moment, sitting in his presence without permission, smoking, and enjoyed the unintended irony. Then he pressed a button on one arm of his throne.

“You know Vuffi Raa, Admiral Shanga, and we both have reason to know Lando Calrissian.” The name stuck unpleasantly in Gepta’s throat; the two words were not the terms on which he was used to thinking of the man, but Shanga would not appreciate or understand the sorcerer’s private system of references. “Now let us hear from one who claims to know something about what else awaits us in the ThonBoka, shall we?”

The squadron leader shrugged, looking suddenly old and tired. He needed to get back to his men. He needed—

A door slid aside, and a tall, gangly human being entered, a man with bushy white hair and a permanently sour expression pulled down over his long undertaker’s features.

“Fleet Admiral Klyn Shanga of Renatasia,” the sorcerer intoned formally, “Please meet the Ottdefa Osuno Whett, Associate Professor of Comparative Sapient Studies at the University—”

“College boys, now!” the fighter pilot snorted, his energy renewed by contempt. “What’s he got to contribute to this palaver, anyway?”

“Rather a good deal, my dear—Admiral, was it?” There was a note of polite disbelief in the man’s voice as he examined Shanga’s clothing, found a place to seat himself, looking first to Gepta for approval, and sat. “I am the galaxy’s foremost expert—by virtue of the fact that I am the only expert, heh, heh—on the Oswaft, the intelligent space-evolved life of the ThonBoka.”

“Some expert! According to our friend the magician, here, nobody knew about those creepy-crawlies until a few months ago, nobody. How much could you have learned in—”

Whett looked a bit disturbed, as if Shanga’s disrespect for Gepta, or at least its punishment, might be contagious. “Sir, I am an anthropologist, the very same who unraveled the impenetrable mysteries of the Sharu of Rafa. I have lived among and studied the asteroid miners of the Oseon, I—”

“The way I heard it, Mister Associate Professor, the Sharu sort of unraveled themselves!” He blew a puff of smoke from his relit cigar and laughed, particularly to see that mention of the Sharu made even Rokur Gepta appear momentarily uncomfortable. Now there was a race of sorcerers!

“My title, Admiral, is Ottdefa, an honor conferred by my home system, and I would thank you to—”

“Forget it, friend, I got carried away.” Shanga looked back to Gepta. He was one of the few men in the known galaxy who could look directly into the sorcerer’s face without wincing. “Okay, I’ll bite: what’s this all about?”

Without a word, Gepta nodded at the Ottdefa, who began again.

“The Oswaft are a most unusual people. I began observing them with an electronic telescope, at the behest of Lord Gepta, until it became apparent that they were aware of the instrumerit’s emanations. Then, in a specially fitted meteoroid, I traversed much of their region, making observations with less intrusive devices. They evolved in space out of the clutter of organic molecules to be found there, and reached the pinnacle of intelligence, protected by the nebula that all but encloses them, and unaware that anyone else existed.

“They have a natural ability to enter hyperspace and travel through it. They communicate by modulating radio-frequency waves with their brains. Theirs is a complex, highly sophisticated language, and it is just about all the culture they possess. They have no need of clothing or shelter, and what little food they require drifts past them on a sort of breeze. Hence, they make few artifacts, most of them sculptures or bodily decorations.”

Shanga shook his head. “I don’t get it. It’s stupid enough that the navy is bothering with them. From everything you say, they’re no threat to anybody; they don’t want anything anybody has. But what’s the point of our boning up on—”

“Because, my dear Shanga,” the