"Yes." He waved a hand in a little nervous circle. "You must understand that Apfahl is, as I said, a rather—ah—well, backward is too strong a word, but—" He stopped, swallowed, began again. "You see, Dr. Dale, Apfahl does not yet have a united planetary government. We have—ah—two sectors, each independently governed. Of course, we who are more enlightened deplore such a state of affairs, but—" He stopped again and smiled weakly. "However that may be, Dr. Dale, it so happens that R. Philipp Dachboden was born, not in this nation of Nordapfahl, but in the country of Sudapfahl."
"But he came here to work, eh?"
Mier bobbed his head in an emphatic yes. "Of course! No man of his brilliance could have been expected to stay in the art-smothering atmosphere of Sudapfahl as it was two hundred years ago. Or even, for that matter, as it is today."
"Well, well," boomed Leland Hale with pompous heartiness, "you are certainly fortunate. Very fortunate indeed, Dr. Mier. To think that there, in your museum, you have an art treasure worth many hundreds of thousands of stellors—possibly a million. Marvelous!"
Dr. Rudolf Mier positively glowed. "Well—yes—I suppose we are pretty lucky at that." A slight frown came over his face. "It has always been—ah—somewhat of a thorn in the side of Apfahl—especially Nordapfahl—that Dachboden was a little ungrateful in not allowing us to keep at least one example of his art."
Leland Hale placidly refrained from pointing out that Dachboden would have starved to death trying to sell his material on Apfahl two centuries before. In the first place, no one there appreciated him, and in the second place, there wasn't much money to be spent on art. Even the little amount Dachboden got for his work off-planet was a tremendous sum as far as Apfahl's economy was concerned.
The luncheon was typically Apfahlian fare—rough, tasteless, but nourishing. Hale ate it stolidly, neither liking nor disliking it; he was merely indifferent to it. Dr. Mier on the other hand, complained that it wasn't properly cooked and still managed to put away enough for three men.
"Tell me, Doctor," said Hale, when he found a lull between courses, "have you considered the idea that someone might steal such a valuable object?"
Mier finished chewing a bite, swallowed it, and shook his head. "There is not much chance of that, Dr. Dale. In the first place, it is locked within the capsule. Oh, I'll admit that the entire capsule could be stolen; it is big, but not so big that it couldn't be taken by someone with the proper equipment.