Trehearne made a mental note of that, though he had no wish to be a factor. The Saarga moved on. They traded with scaly humanoids under the glare of a blue-white sun. They stripped the worlds of a red giant, leaving cheap gilded trinkets in exchange for rare radioactive minerals, and the small wild people felt themselves enriched. Trehearne had been amazed at the persistent recurrence of the humanoid form even when the root-stock from which a particular race had evolved was not even remotely human, and Yann had explained to him what every Vardda school-child was taught in General Biology, that the development of the humanoid form (i.e., possessing a recognizable head, carried in a vertical or erect posture, two lower limbs used for purposes of locomotion, and two upper limbs used for manual tasks) rested simply upon the necessity of a species that intended to progress beyond the animal level of intelligence to evolve hands, or a workable substitute, and free them for use.
But human or humanoid, furred, scaled, feathered, or normally integumented, of whatever color or size or state of social development, one thing was common to all the races of all the worlds. They hated the Vardda. It was a hatred based purely on envy, and Trehearne became so used to it that he hardly thought about it any more, except to notice its variation according to cultures—the aboriginals who mixed with it a worshipful, superstitious fear of the Vardda starlords, the barbarians who would have killed them except that they were greedy for the luxuries of trade, the civilized folk who treated them with cold respect and ate their hearts out with jealous longing. The only thing that really bothered Trehearne was the children, especially the young boys, who followed the Vardda up and down the streets and as near as they were allowed to the ship, asking over and over the same eternal question—"What is it like to fly among the stars?"
He had almost forgotten Earth. And then they swung in toward the world of a yellow sun, a green world that tore his heart quite suddenly with a rush of memories. He stared out the port at distant fields and trees, and at a city that might have been an Earthly city, shorn of its dirt and slums and spreading along the bank of a mighty river, and he was astonished that he could still feel homesick.
Yann looked at him sourly. He was brushing and sprucing up his uniform, and Rohan and Perri were brushing theirs, and none of them looked happy.
"Looks pretty, doesn't it?" said Yann.
Trehearne nodded. He was looking at the river and thinking of the Mississippi. His mind was a long way off.
"Well, it is pretty," Yann muttered. "The climate's fine, the people are civilized, the women are handsome, and I'll bet even the food is good. But we're not allowed to enjoy them. We aren't even—"
The buzzing signal of the ship's intercom interrupted him, and the captain's face appeared on the small tele-screen.
"This is a warning, and a reminder. Here is where we do our trading with our hats in our hands and a humble look. Have you got that, all of you? You are to remain within the trading compound. You are not to fraternize with the natives. You are to show all deference to such members of the Hedarin as you may have contact with. And you are not, under any circumstances, to take offence at anything that may be said by them. In other words, keep your mouths shut until you're forced to open them, and then sing small. Those are orders, and I'll discipline any man that breaks them!"
The screen went dark. Trehearne looked at the others. "What kind of a place is this?"