Snollgren appeared. The keen-eyed observer had been in the ship, and apparently had made it from the Peccable to the endomed temporary camp on a dead run, no little feat in Fasolt’s 1.5-g field.

“Well?” Harskin asked.

The observer opened his face plate and sucked in some of the dome’s high-oxygen atmosphere. “The Rigelians,” he gasped. “They’ve landed. I saw them in orbit.”

“Where?”

“I’d estimate five hundred miles westward. They’re definitely on this continent.”

Harskin glanced at the chronometer set in the wrist of Snollgren’s spacesuit. “We’ll give them an hour to set up their camp. Then we’ll contact them and find out what goes.

The Rigelian captain’s name was Fourteen Deathless. He spoke Galactic with a sharp, crisp accent that Harskin attributed to his ursine ancestry.

“Coincidence we’re both here at the same time, eh, Shipmaster Harskin? Strange are the ways of the Guiding Forces.”

“They certainly are,” Harskin said. He stared at the hand-mike, wishing it were a screen so he could see the sly, smug expression on the Rigelian’s furry face. Obviously, someone had intercepted Harskin’s allegedly secret orders and studied them carefully before forwarding them to their recipient.

Coincidences didn’t happen in interstellar war. The Rigelians were here because they knew the Earthmen were.

“We have arrived at a knotty problem in ethics,” remarked Captain Fourteen Deathless. “Both of us are here for the same purpose, that of negotiating trading rights with the gnorphs. Now — ah — which of us is to make the first attempt to deal with these people?”

“Obviously,” said Harskin, “the ship which landed on Fasolt first has prior claim.”