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“What do they think of our spaceships? Great silver birds, something like that?”

Sighing deeply, Clarey said, “They think our spaceships are cars that fly through the sky without tracks. And they think it’s silly, our having machines to fly in the sky and none to go on the ground. There’s an old Dordonec proverb: ‘One must run before one must fly.’ Originally applied to birds, but—”

“But what else do they think about us?”

Clarey was hurt. “That’s what I was getting to, if you’ll only give me time. After all, I’ve been speaking Vangtort for six months and it’s a little hard to go back to Terran and organize my thoughts at the same time.”

“Terribly sorry,” the colonel apologized, handing him a cup of tea. “Carry on.”

“Thank you. They say if you—if we—are so smart, why do we use hax or the chains like anybody else? They think somebody else must have given us the starships, or else we stole them. That’s mostly Piq’s idea; he’s the village lawyer and, of course, lawyers are apt to think in terms like that.”