Kit blushed and said hastily: “Did he select the tape too? I always have loved Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto.”

“Oh, is that what it is? Nice music for a sentimental occasion, anyway. My department is more the administration of drinks. I prescribe this before dinner: Ansan aurea. Essentially, it’s a light dry vermouth, but for once a non-Terran soil has improved the flavor of a Terran plant.”

She hesitated. “I don’t — I never—”

“Well, high time you began.” He did not glance at the view-screen, where Cerulia shone like steel, but they both knew there might not be many hours left for them to savor existence. She took the glass, sipped, and sighed.

“Thank you, Dominic. I’ve been missin’ out on such a lot.”

They seated themselves. “We’ll have to make that up, after this affair is over,” said Flandry. A darkening passed through him, just long enough to make him add: “However, I suspect that on the whole you’ve done better in life than I.”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes, above the glass, reflected the wine’s hue and became almost golden.

“Oh … hard to say.” His mouth twisted ruefully upward. “I’ve no romantic illusions about the frontier. I’ve seen too much of it. I’d a good deal rather loll in bed sipping my morning chocolate than bounce into the fields before dawn to cultivate the grotch or scag the thimbs or whatever dreary technicalities it is that pioneers undergo. And yet, well, I’ve no illusions about my own class either, or my own way of life. You frontier people are the healthy ones. You’ll be around — most of you — long after the Empire is a fireside legend. I envy you that.”

He broke off. “Pardon me. I’m afraid spiritual jaundice is an occupational disease in my job.”

“Which I’m still not sure what is — Oh, dear.” Kit chuckled. “Does alcohol act that fast? But really, Dominic, I wish you’d talk a little about your work. All you’ve said is, you’re in Naval Intelligence. I’d like to know what you do.”

“Why?” he asked.

She flushed and blurted: “To know you better.”

Flandry saw her confusion and moved to hide it from them both: “There’s not a lot to tell. I’m a field agent, which means I go out and peek through windows instead of sitting in an office reading the reports of window peekers. Thanks to the circumstance that my immediate superior doesn’t like me, I spend most of my working time away from Terra, on what amounts to a roving commission. Good old Fenross. If he was ever replaced by some kindly father-type who dealt justly with all subordinates, I’d dry up and blow away.”

“I think that’s revoltin’.” Anger flashed in her voice.

“What? The discrimination? But my dear lass, what is any civilization but an elaborate structure of special privileges? I’ve learned to make my way around among them. Good frogs, d’you think I want a nice secure desk job with a guaranteed pension?”

“But still, Dominic — a man like you, riskin’ his life again an’ again, sent almost alone against all Ardazir … because someone doesn’t like you!” Her face still burned, and there was a glimmer of tears in the hazel eyes.

“Hard to imagine how that could be,” said Flandry with calculated smugness. He added, lightly and almost automatically: “But after all, think what an outrageous special privilege your personal heredity represents, so much beauty, charm, and intelligence lavished on one little girl.”

She grew mute, but faintly she trembled. With a convulsive gesture, she tossed off her glass.

Easy, boy, thought Flandry. A not unpleasurable alertness came to life. Emotional scenes are the last thing we want out here. “Which brings up the general topic of you,” he said in his chattiest tone. “A subject well worth discussing over the egg flower soup which I see Chives bringing in … or any other course, for that matter. Let’s see, you were a weather engineer’s assistant for a living, isn’t that right? Sounds like fun, in an earnest high-booted way.” And might prove useful, added that part of him which never took a vacation.

She nodded, as anxious as he to escape what they had skirted. They took pleasure in the meal, and talked of many things. Flandry confirmed his impression that Kit was not an unsophisticated peasant. She didn’t know the latest delicious gossip about you-know-who and that actor. But she had measured the seasons of her strange violent planet; she could assemble a machine so men could trust their lives to it; she had hunted and sported, seen birth and death; the intrigues of her small city were as subtle as any around the Imperial throne. Withal, she had the innocence of most frontier folk — or call it optimism, or honor, or courage — at any rate, she had not begun to despair of the human race.

But because he found himself in good company, and this was a special occasion, he kept both their glasses filled. After a while he lost track of how many times he had poured.

When Chives cleared the table and set out coffee and liqueur, Kit reached eagerly for her cup. “I need this,” she said, not quite clearly. “’Fraid I had too much to drink.”

“That was the general idea,” said Flandry. He accepted a cigar from Chives. The Shalmuan went noiselessly out. Flandry looked across the table. Kit sat with her back to the broad viewscreen, so that the stars were jewels clustered around her tiara.

“I don’t believe it,” she said after a moment.

“You’re probably right,” said Flandry. “What don’t you believe?”

“What you were sayin’ … ’bout the Empire bein’ doomed.”

“It’s better not to believe that,” he said gently.

“Not because o’ Terra,” she said. She leaned forward. The light was soft on her bare young shoulders. “The little bit I saw there was a hard blow. But Dominic, as long’s the Empire has men like, like you — we’ll take on the whole universe an’ win.”

“Blessings,” said Flandry in haste.

“No.” Her eyes were the least bit hazed, but they locked steadily with his. She smiled, more in tenderness than mirth. “You won’t wriggle off the hook with a joke this time, Dominic.

You gave me too much to drink, you see, an’ — I mean it. A planet with you on its side has still got hope enough.”

Flandry sipped his liqueur. Suddenly the alcohol touched his own brain with its pale fires, and he thought, Why not be honest with her? She can take it. Maybe she even deserves it.

“No, Kit,” he said. “I know my class from the inside out, because it is my class and I probably wouldn’t choose another even if some miracle made me able to. But we’re hollow, and corrupt, and death has marked us for its own. In the last analysis, however we disguise it, however strenuous and hazardous and even lofty our amusements are, the only reason we can find for living is to have fun. And I’m afraid that isn’t reason enough.”

“But it is!” she cried.

“You think so,” he said, “because you’re lucky, enough to belong to a society which still has important jobs uncompleted. But we aristocrats of Terra, we enjoy life instead of enjoying what we’re doing … and there’s a cosmos of difference.

“The measure of our damnation is that every one of us with any intelligence — and there are some — every one sees the Long Night coming. We’ve grown too wise; we’ve studied a little psycho-dynamics, or perhaps only read a lot of history, and we can see that Manuel’s Empire was not a glorious resurgence. It was the Indian summer of Terran civilization. (But you’ve never seen Indian summer, I suppose. A pity: no planet has anything more beautiful and full of old magics.) Now even that short season is past. Autumn is far along; the nights are cold and the leaves are fallen and the last escaping birds call through a sky which has lost all color. And yet, we who see winter coming can also see it won’t be here till after our lifetimes … so we shiver a bit, and swear a bit, and go back to playing with a few bright dead leaves.”