Of the eleven highly variegated worlds that circled the giant red star, only Fafnir bore. life. The gnorphs were an intelligent race of biped humanoids — the classic shape of intelligent life. The Terrans were simian-oid; the Rigelians, ursinoid. But the gnorphs owed their appearance neither to apes nor bears; they were reptilians, erect and tailless. Fafnir was not hospitable to mammalian life.

Harskin stared broodingly out the viewing bay as the blood-red seas of Fafnir grew larger. The Rigelian ship could not be seen, but he knew it was on its way. He made a mental note to inform Terran Intelligence that the secrecy of the high command’s secret orders was open to some question.

It was a strange war — a war fought with documents rather than energy cannons. The shooting stage of the war between the galaxy’s two leading races had long since ended in sheer futility; the development of the Martineau Negascreen, which happily drank up every megawatt of a bombardment and fired it back at triple intensity, had quickly put an end to active hostility.

Now, the war was carried on at a subtler level — the economic one. Rigel and Terra strove to outdo each other in extracting exclusive trading rights from systems, hoping to choke each other’s lifelines. The universe was infinite, or close enough to infinite to keep both systems busy for quite a few millennia to come.

Harskin shrugged. Terran scouts had visited Fafnir and had reported little anxiety on the part of the gnorphs to take part in the Galactic stream of things. Presumably, Rigel IV had not yet visited the world; it was simpler to pirate the Terran scout reports.

Well, this would really be a test.

“Preparing to land, sir,” said Navigator Dominic. “Any instructions?”

“Yes,” Harskin said. “Bring us down where it’s dry.”

The landing was a good one, on the centermost of the island group that made up Fafnir’s main land mass. Harskin and his twelve men — he had left five behind in the dome on Fasolt to hedge his bet — left the ship.