Kihara and his two petty officers were the engineers. Corporal Crespi, with a gang of marines and Fishdollars, milled fragrant lumber from native hardwoods. Houses went up and were filled with furniture rough-styled by General Cobb. The ambassador worked on the power plant, the materials converter, and then the air conditioning. The men became hard, deeply bronzed, strongly alive as the native trees.
With his aides, the ambassador worked out treaty revisions.
"PR will never ratify," Rutledge said.
"Look. Maybe the aliens don't exist," the ambassador argued. "If they do exist, they may respect boundaries. Then Fishdollar Five stakes a huge claim for humanity. If it's war, we make our fight around an outpost planet, far from settled regions."
"We ain't Prime Reference," Chong growled. "Who you trying to convince?"
Fishdollar Five ratified the treaty. Ambassador Welnicki looked unhappily at his initials and told the foreign minister, "I'm sorry, Linda."
"We understand, Stephen. We know you're doing all you dare for us."
Resting one day from pipefitting, the ambassador asked Kihara, "You know math, chief. Isn't it true this damned, sacred 'sphere of settlement' really takes in the whole galaxy in subspace?"