"Probably. But Masters, who visited them, had a theory about it, which is that the inferior would be so polite and deferential that he would do his best to anticipate a wish or a desire, or would go to any lengths to learn the import of an unvoiced preference."
"Is Masters one of the young pilots?"
"No, an old-timer."
"Now you do interest me."
"Dead quite a few years. But it is you who interest me, Marlow. I have been told to give you all the information you need about the Polite People of Pudibundia. And on the subject of the Polite People, I must also be polite. But—saving your presence, and one hears of one who hears and all that—what in gehenna is a captain in Homicide on the Solar Police Force going to Pudibundia about?"
"About murder. That is all I ever go anywhere about. We once had a private motto that we would go to the end of the Earth to solve a case."
"And now you have amended your motto to 'to the end of the Earth and beyond'?"
"We have."
"But what have the Polite People to do with murder? Crime is unknown on Pudibundia."
"We believe, saving their feelings, that it may not be unknown there. And what I am going to find out is this. There have been pilots for many years who have brought back stories of the Puds, and there are still a few—a very few—young pilots alive to tell those stories. What I am going to find out is why there are no old pilots around telling those stories."