"Sam, you mean he's Prime Governor of—"
"The whole planet."
"Am I always supposed to say his name twice?"
"That is his name. That's the way they do it. Now shut up, Skipper, and let me do the talking. I'm going to go through the whole works again with 'em. Then we sign. Then you get a tour of the town so the people can be introduced to you officially. But don't go making any speeches! Behave, and we're in business."
"You go to—"
But Sam had already started talking in the liquid-sounding language, and Joel decided it was better for him to keep his own mouth shut and be thought stupid than open it and remove all doubt. Damn it, the whole thing was making him feel just the way he had twenty years ago, when he landed his first explorer on an alien world! It had been that long, and how many hundred meetings with alien life-forms since then, under how many fantastic circumstances, on how many God-forsaken, unworldly places? By now he was supposed to know the score. By now he was supposed to have seen everything. By now he knew the book inside and out, and had the ability to take charge no matter where in the black universe they sent him. Nicholas Joel, United Americas Intergalactic Exploration Fleet, of the Ship White Whale, commanding....
But nobody was challenging his right to have what he'd come for!
No trouble, that was the hell of it, and—and there was nothing to hate.
For a miserable moment, Captain Nicholas Joel stood becalmed, with not so much as a breeze in his sagging sails.
But he would not let them know it. He looked levelly into the eyes of each of the twelve, but even that did little to make him feel more at ease.