"About three weeks, Jim, you think?" Garlock asked.
"Give or take a couple of days, yes."
"And Belle and I would just be in the way—at least until time to show Deggi about the activation ... and all those Primes to organize ... we'd better leave you here, don't you think, and get going?"
"I'll buy that. We'll finish as soon as possible."
Lola and James moved a few personal belongings planetside; Garlock and Belle shot the Pleiades across a vast gulf of space to one of the planets they had scanned so fleetingly on their preliminary survey. Its name was, both remembered, Lizoria; its two Primes were named Rezdo Semolo and Mirea Mitala—male and female, respectively.
After sending down a very brief and perfunctory request for audience—which was in effect a declaration of intent and nothing else—Garlock and Belle teleported themselves down into Semolo's office, where both Lizorian Primes were.
Both got up out of peculiar-looking chairs to face their visitors. Both were tall; both were peculiarly thin. Not the thinness of emaciation, but that of bodily structure.
"On them it looks good," Belle tight-beamed a thought to Garlock.
Both moved fast and with exquisite control; both were extraordinarily graceful. "Snaky" was Belle's thought of the woman; "sinuous" was Garlock's of the man. Both were completely hairless, of body and of head—not by nature, but via electric-shaver clipping. Both wore sandals. The man wore shorts and a shirt-like garment of nylon or its like; the woman wore just enough ribbons and bands to hold a hundred thousand credits' worth of jewels in place. She appeared to be about twenty years—Tellurian equivalent—old; he was probably twenty-three or twenty-four.
"We did not invite you in and we do not want you here," Semolo said, coldly. "So get out, both of you. If you don't, when I count three I'll throw you out, and I won't be too careful about how many of your bones I break. One.... Two...."