Embarrassed, Wesley made deprecating sounds. "I don't really want payment. I'm more interested in knowing how and why you're here."
The information was readily given. Clelling, completely telepathic among his own kind and nearly so with humanity—as witness his instant grasp of English—anticipated Wesley's questions with answers that left him dizzier than before.
"The galaxy is a more populous place than you imagine," Clelling said. "And civilized to a degree beyond your comprehension. Transportation and trade among so many differing worlds is a complex business occupying the attention of millions. My wife and I deal in travel for pleasure—we are what you would call tourist agents."
A vision of seeing Aldhafera at first hand electrified Wesley. "You're selling star trips here? On Earth?"
Clelling denied it with regret. "Your world has been under observation for years by a galactic ecological group in upstate Pennsylvania, but you are not ready yet. Economic and social stabilization, and elimination of war, must come before you can be admitted as a culture."
Wesley sighed and Clelling made hasty correction.
"Under the circumstances, that ban need not apply to you. We can offer help too with the information on galactic conditions you need to lend authenticity to your writing."
He went to a file that nestled between two feathery flowering shrubs and drew out a glossy folder that glowed in three-dimensional illustration as if lighted from within.
"Aldhafera," Clelling said.
Wesley took it almost reverently. The binary suns of Aldhafera did have planets—not one, as he had postulated, but five—capable of supporting life. The minor sun was negligible and all but extinct, furnishing precisely the exotic moon he had been considering when he first heard Mitsik piping in her pool.