“Not much choice there,” Penny said, and Rance nodded. She looked a question at him. He nodded again. She spoke for both of them: “We’ll take South Africa.”

“You shall be sent there,” Hesskett said. “You shall live out the rest of your days there. You shall not leave, unless by order of the Race. Do you understand this?”

“Exile,” Auerbach said.

“Exile, yes,” Hesskett agreed. “I have heard this word in your language before, but I did not remember it. Now I shall.”

Auerbach tried to remember what he knew of South Africa. Not much, he discovered. Gold and diamonds came to mind. So did the Boer War. Before the Lizards arrived, the South Africans had been on the Allies’ side, but a good many of them wished they’d lined up with the Nazis instead. Whites lorded it over blacks who enormously outnumbered them. It was sort of like the American South, only more so.

He looked down at his arm. Sure as hell, he was the right color to go there. He hadn’t heard much about the place since the fighting ended. Every now and then, there’d been stories about a low-grade guerrilla war. Those had mostly disappeared from the newspapers in the past few years. That probably meant most of the guerrillas had gone to their heavenly reward.

Still, it didn’t seem too bad, especially for a white man-and a white woman. “South Africa,” he said in musing tones. “I think we can make the best of it.”

“Me, too,” Penny said. Auerbach wasn’t altogether comfortable with her expression. What it seemed to say was, If I find something good, I can always dump this guy. She’d done it before.

Of course, he would have been better off if she’d stayed out of his life once she dumped him. Still, getting laid regularly had its points.

Hesskett said, “Once you are there, we do not provide for you. You will have to make your own way.”

How the hell am I supposed to do that, crippled up like I am? Rance wondered. If the other choice was a cell, though, he supposed he could try. The Lizards’ jail hadn’t been so bad as he’d expected, but he didn’t want to live there the rest of his life.

Penny said, “You can’t just drop us there without a dime in our pockets. We need enough money to keep us going till we can get on our feet.”

That started the haggling again. Auerbach wondered if he could arrange to have his government pension sent to him in Cape Town or wherever the hell he ended up. He didn’t mention that to Hesskett. He did point out his injuries, adding, “These are your fault, too.”

Hesskett wasn’t the best bargainer who ever came down the pike. Few Lizards were good bargainers, not by human standards. By the time Rance and Penny got done with him, he’d promised the Race would support them for six months, with another six months’ help forthcoming if they were still having trouble after that.

“Beats the hell out of jail,” Penny said as the Lizard airplane on which they would fly took off from Mexico City.

“Jail, nothing-beats the hell out of whatever we could think of,” Auerbach said. “Talk about coming up smelling like a rose.” He leaned over and gave Penny a kiss. Maybe she’d dump him, maybe she wouldn’t. Meanwhile, he’d enjoy what he had while it lasted.

Straha would never have got interested in the U.S. space station if it hadn’t been for Sam Yeager. The ex-shiplord knew as much. He’d agreed to stick out his tongue in the station’s direction not so much because he thought anything about it was particularly odd as because his Tosevite friend-a notion he was still getting used to-had asked it of him.

He’d always known Yeager was a clever Big Ugly. Now he was seeing just how good the American officer’s instincts were. He still hadn’t the faintest idea what the USA was doing with its station. As far as he could tell, not a male or female of the Race knew the answer to that. But something strange-which presumably meant something illicit-was going on up there.

He wondered how many American Big Uglies knew what was going on at the space station. Not many, surely, or Yeager would have been one of them. That he wasn’t anyhow puzzled Straha. He’d been entrusted with important secrets before. Straha knew of some of them. For that matter, Straha was one of the important secrets with which Yeager had been entrusted. That a secret should be so much more important than he had been during the fighting wounded his vanity.

He would have asked more questions among the humans of his acquaintance had it not been for his driver. He feared that, whatever the formidable male heard, the U.S. government would hear in short order. His driver no doubt knew a good many secrets of his own. He might even know what the Americans were doing up at the space station. Straha did not have the nerve to ask him.

At the moment, Straha was catching up on the Race’s computer discussion about the station. A female named Kassquit kept asking leading questions, good ones. She showed unusual understanding of the Big Uglies. The experience Straha had gained in twenty long Tosevite years of living among them made him able to see that.

“Psychologist’s apprentice,” he muttered, looking at the way she described herself. “She ought to be an intermediate researcher by now, heading toward senior. By the Emperor, she would if I were in charge. But those fools up there are dim themselves, so they think everyone else must be, too.”

If I were in charge. Even now, after all these years of exile, the words still leapt to his mind. Atvar had bumbled along, doing the safe, doing the cautious, occasionally doing the stupid. And the Race had got by, as it had got by on Home for a hundred thousand years. Even snout-to-snout with the Big Uglies, the Race had got by. Atvar had made his share-more than his share-of mistakes, but the Tosevites had made their share, too, and disaster hadn’t come. Quite.

“Still,” Straha said, “I would have done better.” His pride was enormous. If only a few more males had gone with him at that climactic meeting after the Soviet Union touched off its first explosive-metal bomb. He would have ousted Atvar, and Tosev 3 would have looked… different.

The telephone rang, distracting him. Tosevite telephones were simple-minded machines, without screens and with only the most limited facilities for anything but voice transmission. Straha often missed the versatile phone he’d had before he defected. So many things he’d taken for granted…

“Hello?” he said in English, and then gave his name.

“I greet you, Shiplord,” a male said. “Ristin speaking. Ullhass and I will be holding another party on Saturday night”-the name of the day was in English-“and hoped you might join us.”

Straha started to decline; he hadn’t had that good a time at Ristin’s earlier gathering. Then he thought that he might meet interesting males there-former prisoners who had thrown in their lot with the American Big Uglies, perhaps even visitors from areas of Tosev 3 the Race ruled. Who could tell what he might learn from them?

And so he said, “I thank you. I believe I will come, yes.”

“I thank you, Shiplord.” Ristin sounded surprised and pleased. “I look forward to seeing you there.”

“I will see you then,” Straha said, and hung up. He didn’t particularly look forward to it. Having committed himself, though, he would go.

His driver greeted the news with something less than rapture. “A party?” the Tosevite said when Straha told him. “I was hoping to watch television that night.”

“You Tosevites did not even have television when you were a hatchling,” Straha told him. “You cannot find it as necessary as the Race does.”

“Who said anything about necessary?” the driver returned. “I enjoy it.” Straha said nothing. He stood and waited and looked at the driver with both eye turrets. The Big Ugly sighed. “It shall be done, Shiplord.”

“Of course it shall,” Straha said smugly. The driver gave him more trouble than a male of the Race with a similar job would have done. Big Uglies-especially American Big Uglies-did not understand the first thing about subordination. But the driver, having made his complaints, would now do what was required of him.