Shluh muttered incomprehensibly.
"Just a bare hunk of iron, Shluh. That's what the foreign office told me when I asked for information."
"I wish you'd keep your prisoner out of sight," the captain said. "I have a hard time keeping my hands off him."
"Shluh wants to help, Captain. He's been a bad boy and I have a feeling he'd like to cooperate with us now. Especially in view of the imminent arrival of a Terrestrial ship, and the dust cloud out there."
"What do you mean?"
"Captain, you can ride it out for another week, contact the ship when it arrives, get a tow in and your troubles are over. When your films are shown in the proper quarter, a task force will come out here. They'll reduce Groac to a sub-technical cultural level, and set up a monitor system to insure she doesn't get any more expansionist ideas. Not that she can do much now, with her handy iron mine in the sky gone."
"That's right; and—"
"On the other hand," Retief said, "there's what I might call the diplomatic approach...."
He explained at length. The captain looked at him thoughtfully.
"I'll go along," he said. "What about this fellow?"