“Cover it up,” Dr. Schein ordered.

Mirrik protested. Since we were waiting around anyway for the military escort that was supposed to convoy us to our real work site, he wanted to amuse himself by digging this stuff. Saul Shahmoon was curious about it too. But Dr. Schein rightly pointed out that we had come here to excavate High Ones artifacts, not to fission around with the remains of minor local civilizations. We had no business disturbing this site; it would be a kind of vandalism if we did, since it rightfully belongs to archaeologists who are specialists in the Higby V native race. If there aren’t any such specialists now, there will be someday. Mirrik saw the logic of that and carefully backfilled what he had unearthed.

Score one for Dr. Schein. I admire professionalism.

At last our military escort arrived and transported us from the landing area to the collection of bubbleshacks that passes for Higby V’s greatest metropolis. There we had a vastness of triviations to take care of. Dr. Schein handled the job of making sure our funds had been transferred into a local account, so we’d be able to get food and supplies at the base PX. Such financial details are supposed to be handled automatically by Galaxy Central, but nobody with a proper reverence for stash ever assumes that Galaxy Central gets anything straight, which is why Dr. Schein checked. Checking involved plugging into the telepath hookup. The TP on duty was a surly vidj named Marge Hotchkiss, and if you ever hook horns with her in the course of your daily work, Lorie, give her a nasty overload for me, will you? This Hotchkiss person was plump and plain, with piggy little gray eyes and a very visible mustache. About thirty-five, I guess. Except for her TP powers she is probably an extraordinarily ordinary person, the kind normally destined for a life of quiet spinsterhood in some decayed rooming house; but out here she’s one of about fifty women on a planet populated by several thousand men, and that has made her arrogant beyond her station.