"That helps," sighed Mayne, "but not enough."
He got a message blank from the pilot. With some labor, he composed a request to Terran headquarters on Rigel IX for authorization to spend two million credits on good-will preparations for the Terran-Kappan treaty conference.
It almost sounds diplomatic, he told himself before having the message sent.
The waiting period that followed was more to be blamed upon headquarters pussyfooting than upon the subspace transmission. When an answer finally came, it required a further exchange of messages.
Mayne's last communique might have been boiled down to, "But I need it!"
The last reply granted provisional permission to spend the sum mentioned; but gleaming between the lines like the sweep of a revolving beacon was a strong intimation that Mayne had better not hope to charge the item to "good will." The budget just was not made that way, the hint concluded.
"It's due to get dark soon, isn't it?" he asked Haruhiku, crumpling the final message into a side pocket. "I don't believe I'll resume the talks till morning. Maybe my head will function again by then."
In the morning, one of the scout's crew again took the pilot and Mayne to the meeting by helicopter. Mayne spent part of the trip mulling over a message Haruhiku had received. The spaceship Diamond Belt could be expected to arrive in orbit about the planet later the same day, bearing special envoy J. P. McDonald. The captain, having been informed of Haruhiku's presence, requested landing advice.
"I told him what I know," said the pilot. "We can give him a beam down, of course, unless you think we should send him somewhere else."