"To talk to you," said Thumper. "I'm by myself, incase you hadn't noticed."

"You have weapons."

"sure do," said Thumper. "It's part of my job to carry them. If I wanted to use them, I would have sneaked up on you from downwind and got you before you knew where I was. You know I could do it."

There was a pause, as if the other were thinking things over then the voice said, "Follow me." The bright shape got to its feet and began to walk quietly away from the camp it had been guarding. Thumper followed, at a distance.

Perhaps a hundred meters from the camp, the figure turned and faced Thumper. "All right, this should be safe," it said. "What does a legionnaire want with me?"

"1 told you, I want to talk," said Thumper. "What do you have against the Legion?"

"Stinking humans," growled Barky, the Environmental dog. "Make other sophonts do all the work, take all the credit."

"Not everybody in the Legion's human," said Thumper. "There's me, for one. And the Gambolts, and the Volton, and the Synthians."

"All the leaders are human," said Barky.

"That's true," said Thumper. "Especially the commanding general. I got in trouble with him back in basic training. But that's a long story, and it's not what I came here to talk about." Barky said nothing, waiting.

"All right," said Thumper, shrugging. "All I really need to say is that you and your humans are doing your jobs, and we're doing ours, and there's no reason we need to be enemies. Have you 'caught us polluting or destroying the environment?"

"Not yet," said Barky, reluctantly. "But if you do your job, sooner or later it will hurt the environment. War is not healthy..."

"For living things," Thumper said. "I learned that in school. They had us watch your show a lot."

"Then you know what I mean," said the Environmental Dog.

"Sure," said Thumper. "But we aren't here fighting a war. In fact, I don't think there's a war anywhere in Alliance space we could be going to fight. So we've got to do other jobs. If the other guys are telling me the truth, what we're doing here is keeping a war from getting started."

"I'm sure that is very wonderful," said Barky. "You will no doubt be able to tell me how bringing more soldiers and weapons to a place where there is no war is going to keep one from starting."

"Some of the other guys can answer that better than I can," said Thumper. "I came out here to talk about something else, though. Answer me this: Your job is to fight pollution, but is it better to fight it, or to prevent it from happening at all?"

"You know the answer to that," growled Barky. "What are you telling me?"

"I'm telling you something you'll be very interested in hearing," said Thumper. "Listen to this..." Thumper spoke quickly, skipping over all but the most

crucial details. But Barky only interrupted him with questions twice. By the end, the Environmental Dog was growling and gnashing his teeth. "All right, you've convinced me," he said at last. "You can count on me."

"Good," said Thumper. "We'll let you know when we need you to help." He turned and headed back along the path to his guard post. It was with considerable relief that he discovered that his little excursion hadn't been noticed at all.

Or so he thought. He settled into his assigned guard post, ready to spend the rest of his shift doing the duty to which he'd been assigned. He had a feeling of accomplishment--he had done his part to counteract what he saw as the greatest threat to the missions' of both the Legion and the AElOU here on Zenobia.

A more experienced legionnaire might have noticed the shadowy figure that had trailed him all the way to the AEIOU camp and eavesdropped on his entire conversation with Barky. Perhaps a more experienced legionnaire would have circled back to observe the AEIOU camp after he had announced his departure. Then he might have seen that his conversation with Barky was just the beginning of the evening's events...

16

Journal #744

Those of us who spend much time with the class of humans who travel to distant worlds to pursue golf, bird-watching, mountain climbing, or underwater fandootery, cannot fail to note how little interest these people have in the sophonts native to the worlds they visit. At best, they poke gentle fun at their customs and language; at worst, they consider them lesser races to be pushed out of the way when they happen to inhabit a particularly valuable sand trap or fandooter's reef Curious, then, how their attitude changes when one of the locals presents himself in the role of a native guide and how uncritically they accept the native's qualifications for a task that none of them would dare undertake without considerable special training.

Euston 0'Better sat at a camp table in the center of the hunters' campground, scanning a rough topographical map of the eastern part of the main Zenobian continent. It was rough because it had been downloaded from the landing craft's navigational computer, which had scanned the surface during their approach to the current landing site.

O'Better was almost certain that the Legion company had better maps, but those were currently unavailable to him. The Legion captain had smiled and hinted at military secrets. "We'll try to get a civilian-legal map printed out for you," he drawled, but nothing had so far come of it.

The natives undoubtedly had maps, too, but the hunting party had yet to meet an actual Zenobian. They'd all seen them on the tri-vee, of course. They looked like little dinosaurs, O'Better remembered, although they reportedly had a primitive spacegoing technology. And Willard Phule-captain Jester-had talked them into a sweetheart deal with his father's company.

There was a roundish feature on the map, about fifty Eos west of the camp, that had looked a lot like a salt dome when they'd flown in over it. That might indicate trace mineral deposits, in which O'Better had a professional interest. But they had to get out into the desert, where the Legion wasn't looking over their every move, before he could find out whether there was anything more to it. He'd have to do some seismic testing, and that required making few loud noises-more than they could get away with this close to a military installation. Especially one whose leader had reportedly negotiated an exclusive on trade rights with the natives. Out in the desert, nobody'd notice-and if they did, the "hunters" could always explain it away as gunfire. After all, if you were trying to kill a dino, you needed a real big gun-didn't you? And, thanks to the crooked Supply sergeant, they were going to be trying out some really big ones this time out.

He smiled and rolled up his map. Hunting dinos was fine, especially if it gave him the chance to test a few otherwise unobtainable weapons. His friends at BigBoum Armaments would be very interested in his report on the capabilities of the new weapons Omega Company was supplied with-thanks to the company commander's father, who just happened to be the CEO of Phule-Proof, BigBoum's main competitor. And if at the same time he managed to get a lead on some unexploited mineral rights that he could possibly convince the ignorant natives to let him exploit-why, there was a lot to be said for combining business with pleasure.

He had just decided it wasn't worth trying to get the computer to enhance the printout-if only because he wasn't sure he really knew how to get the stubborn machine to do what he wanted-when a high-pitched voice said, right behind his left ear, "Hello, you are leader of the hunting humans?"

0'Better turned to see a reptilian face with a mouthful of sharp-looking teeth, and nearly jumped out of his skin. "Wh-who the hell are you?" he asked.

"I am Qual, your hunting guide," said the creature, grinning ferociously. At second glance, O'Better saw that it was wearing a battered straw hat and ragged camouflage. "A friend with big ears told me of your need, and so here I am standing."