He got so involved staring at an enormous dry riverbed, he almost missed the intercom: “Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson! Report at once to Scooter Bay One! Colonel Johnson! Colonel Glen Johnson! Report at once to-”

“ ’Bye,” he said, and launched himself down the tube he’d ascended a little while before. As long as nobody was screaming at him to report to Lieutenant General Healey’s office, he’d cheerfully go wherever he was told. He’d go to see Healey, too; he was military down to his toes. But he wouldn’t be cheerful about it.

“Good-you got here fast,” a technician said when he came gliding up.

“What’s going on?” Johnson asked.

“We got a Mayday call from the Lizards, if you can believe it,” the tech answered. “Their stuff is good, but it looks like it isn’t quite perfect. One of their scooters had its main engines go out not far from us. We’re closer than any of their ships, and they ask if we can bring the scooter crew back here till they make pickup.”

“I’ll go get ’em,” Johnson said, and started climbing into the spacesuit that hung by the inner airlock door. He paused halfway through. Laughing, he went on, “They’ll fluoroscope every inch of those poor Lizards before they let ’em into their ships. Gotta make sure they aren’t smuggling ginger, you know.”

“Well, sure,” the technician said. “They’ll probably send that Rabotev for the pickup, too. He doesn’t care anything about the stuff-though he might care about the money he can bring in for smuggling it.”

“There’s a thought.” Johnson finished getting into the spacesuit. He ran diagnostic checks on the scooter as fast as he could without scanting them. He didn’t want to get in trouble out there and need rescuing himself. When the outer airlock door opened he guided the scooter out with the steering jets. The tech gave him a bearing on the crippled Lizard scooter. His own radar identified the target. He fired a longish blast with his rear motor. The Admiral Peary shrank behind him.

He used the Lizards’ signaling frequency: “I greet you, members of the Race. Are you well? Do you need anything more than transportation? This is a scooter from the Tosevite starship, come to pick you up.” Partly by eye and partly by radar, he decided when to make the burn that would bring him to a halt near the Lizard craft in difficulties.

“We thank you, Tosevite. Except for engine failure, we are well.” The Lizard who’d answered was silent for a moment, probably pausing for a rueful laugh. “These things are not supposed to happen. They are especially not supposed to happen when you Big Uglies can make fun of us for bad engineering.”

“Yours is better than ours, and everyone knows it.” Johnson peered ahead. Yes, that was a scooter of the sort the Race built. “Nobody’s engineering is perfect, though. We already know that, too.”

“You are generous to show so much forbearance,” the Lizard replied. “Were our roles reversed, we would mock you.”

“If you like, you may think of me as laughing on the inside,” Johnson said. “Meanwhile, why not leave your scooter and come over to mine once I kill my relative velocity? I will take you back to my ship. Your friends can pick you up at their convenience.”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” the Lizard said. By the way the two members of the Race handled themselves as they pushed off from their disabled craft, they were experienced in free fall. Johnson put one of them in front of him and one behind, so as not to disturb his scooter’s center of mass too much.

As he burned for the Admiral Peary, he made the same sort of remark he had with the technician: “They will fumigate you before they let you back on any of your own ships.” His passengers were silent. They would have been silent if they were laughing, too. He looked at each of them in turn. Laughing, they weren’t.