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what he intended a small boy pulling something like a toy riding-horse behind him came into the game
room and grabbed Trobt's trouser leg. He was the first blond child I had seen on Velda.
The boy pointed at the swords on the wall. "Da," he said beseechingly, making reaching motions. "Da."
Trobt kept his attention on me. After a moment a faint humorless smile moved his lips. He seemed to
grow taller, with the impression a strong man gives when he remembers his strength. "You will find no
weakness," he said. He sat down again and placed the child on his lap.
The boy grabbed immediately at the abacus hanging on Trobt's belt and began playing with it, while
Trobt stroked his hair. All the Veldians dearly loved children, I had noticed.
"Do you have any idea how many of our ships were used to wipe out your fleet?" he asked abruptly.
As I allowed myself to show the interest I felt he put a hand on the boy's shoulder and leaned forward.
"One," he said.
* * *
I very nearly called Trobt a liar one ship obliterating a thousand before I remembered that Veldians
were not liars, and that Trobt obviously was not lying. Somehow this small under-populated planet had
developed a science of weapons that vastly exceeded that of the Ten Thousand Worlds.
I had thought that perhaps my vacation on this Games-mad planet would result in some mutual
information that would bring quick negotiation or conciliation: That players of a chesslike game would
be easy to approach: That I would meet men intelligent enough to see the absurdity of such an ill-fated
war against the overwhelming odds of the Ten Thousand Worlds Federation. Intelligent enough to
foresee the disaster that would result from such a fight. It began to look as if the disaster might be to the
Ten Thousand and not to the one.
* * *
Thinking, I walked alone in Trobt's roof garden.
Walking in Velda's heavy gravity took more energy than I cared to expend, but too long a period without
exercise brought a dull ache to the muscles of my shoulders and at the base of my neck.
This was my third evening in the house. I had slept at least ten hours each night since I arrived, and
found myself exhausted at day's end, unless I was able to take a nap or lie down during the afternoon.
The flowers and shrubbery in the garden seemed to feel the weight of gravity also, for most of them
grew low, and many sent creepers out along the ground. Overhead strange formations of stars clustered
thickly and shed a glow on the garden very like Earth's moonlight.
I was just beginning to feel the heavy drag in my leg tendons when a woman's voice said, "Why don't
you rest a while?" It spun me around as I looked for the source of the voice.
I found her in a nook in the bushes, seated on a contour chair that allowed her to stretch out in a half-
reclining position. She must have weighed near to two hundred Earth-weight pounds.
But the thing that had startled me more than the sound of her voice was that she had spoken in the
universal language of the Ten Thousand Worlds. And without accent!
"You're ?" I started to ask.
"Human," she finished for me.
"How did you get here?" I inquired eagerly.
"With my husband." She was obviously enjoying my astonishment. She was a beautiful woman, in a
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Give Me Liberty
gentle bovine way, and very friendly. Her blond hair was done up in tight ringlets.
"You mean . . . Trobt?" I asked.
"Yes." As I stood trying to phrase my wonderment into more questions, she asked, "You're the
Earthman, aren't you?"
I nodded. "Are you from Earth?"
"No," she answered. "My home world is Mandel's Planet, in the Thumb group."
She indicated a low hassock of a pair, and I seated myself on the lower and leaned an elbow on the
higher, beginning to smile. It would have been difficult not to smile in the presence of anyone so
contented. "How did you meet Trobt?" I asked.
"It's a simple love story. Kalin visited Mandel without revealing his true identity of course met, and
courted me. I learned to love him, and agreed to come to his world as his wife."
"Did you know that he wasn't . . . That he . . ." I stumbled over just how to phrase the question. And
wondered if I should have started it.
Her teeth showed white and even as she smiled. She propped a pillow under one plump arm and finished
my sentence for me. ". . . That he wasn't Human?" I was grateful for the way she put me at ease almost
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