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By Root 474 0

Queen to whom he had been introduced at a reception in the Mayor's Palace. ("And there I was," he had complained afterwards to Beadle, "having to say nice things to a bedraggled old oversized bumblebee loaded down with more precious stones than this ship could lift . . . and with all that tonnage of diamonds and the like she couldn't afford a decent voice box; it sounded like a scratched platter and a worn-out needle on one of those antique record players . . .") This Shreen was—beautiful. It was an inhuman beauty (of course), that of a glittering, intricate mobile. By chance or design—design thought Grimes—her voice box produced a pleasant, almost seductive contralto, with faintly buzzing undertones. She was an arthroped, but there could be no doubt about the fact that she was an attractively female member of her race.

She was saying, "I find you humans so fascinating, Captain. There is so much similarity between yourselves and ourselves, and such great differences. But I have enjoyed my stay on this planet . . ."

"And will you be here much longer, Your Highness?"

"Call me Shreen, Captain," she told him.

"Thank you, Shreen. My name is John. I shall feel honored if you call me that." He laughed. "In any case, my real rank is only Lieutenant."

"Very well, Lieutenant John. But to answer your question. I fear that I shall return to my own world as soon as I have gained my degree in Socio-Economics. Our Queen Mother decided that this will be a useful qualification for a future ruler. The winds of change blow through our hives, and we must trim our wings to them." And very pretty wings, too, thought Grimes.

But Shreen was impossibly alien, and the girl who approached gracefully over the polished floor was indubitably human. She was slender, and tall for a woman, and her gleaming auburn hair was piled high in an intricate coronal. Her mouth was too wide for conventional prettiness, the planes of her thin face too well defined. Her eyes were definitely green. Her smile, as she spoke, made her beautiful.

"Another conquest, Shreen?" she asked.

"I wish it were, Selma," replied the Princess. "I wish that Lieutenant John were an arthroped like myself."

"In that case," grinned Grimes, "I'd be a drone."

"From what I can gather," retorted the human girl, "that's all that spaceship captains are anyhow."

"Have you met Selma?" asked Shreen. Then she performed the introductions.

"And are you enjoying the party, Mr. Grimes?" inquired Selma Madigan.

"Yes, Miss Madigan. It's a very pleasant change from the usual official function—but don't tell anybody that I said so."

"I'm glad you like us. We try to get away from that ghastly Outposts of Empire atmosphere. Quite a number of our students are like Shreen here, quote aliens unquote . . ."

"On my world you would be the aliens."

"I know, my dear, and I'm sure that Mr. Grimes does too. But all intelligent beings can make valuable contributions to each other's cultures. No one race has a sacred mission to civilize the Galaxy."

"I wish you wouldn't preach, Selma." It was amazing how much expression the Princess could get out of her mechanical voice box. "But if you must, perhaps you can make a convert out of Lieutenant John." She waved a thin, gracefully articulated forelimb and was away, gliding off to join a group composed of two human men, a young Hallichek and a gaudy pseudo-saurian from Dekkovar.

Selma Madigan looked directly at Grimes. "And what do you think of our policy of integration?" she asked.

"It has to come, I suppose."

"It has to come," she mimicked. "You brassbound types are all the same. You get along famously with somebody like Shreen, because she's a real, live Princess. But the Shaara royalty isn't royalty as we understand it. The Queens are females who've reached the egg-laying stage, the Princesses are females who are not yet sexually developed. Still—Shreen's a Princess. You have far less in common with her, biologically speaking, than you have with Oona—but you gave Oona the brush-off and fawned all over Shreen."

Grimes flushed. "Oona's a rather smelly and