Uju-Riel was the first to see the alien spaceship. He noticed a tiny fast-moving blip on his radar screen which he first took for some kind of a freak reflex because in his opinion it was impossible for a vessel to move as rapidly as the blip indicated.

Such interference reflexes usually quickly disappeared but the, point wandered across the upper area of the screen and moved out to the left edge. Uju-Riel was startled and he tried to compute the velocity of the object. The radar had picked it up at an altitude of 300 kilometres and the blip had taken about 6 seconds to get across the width of the screen. Therefore he figured that the object moved at a speed of approximately 20 kilometres per second.

The only ships which could travel that fast were the interplanetaries. Yet of the 3 such vessels that existed in their world he knew that one was at this time on a trip to Weelie-Wee under the command of Capt. Sey-Wuun and the other 2 were confined to their starting pads at Sielij and Heejii.

Uju-Riel hesitated a minute but then decided to give alarm. He reported that he had observed a foreign object at an altitude of 300 kilometres which moved at a velocity of about 20 kilometres per second from northeast to southwest and that he considered it prudent to pass on this information before a disaster occurred.

As everybody knew that the ship under Capt. Sey-Wuun’s command couldn’t possibly have returned yet, Uju-Riel’s report was at first ridiculed. But half an hour later Uju-Riel observed the same radar reflex once again and this time it was close enough so that the other less sensitive instruments could pick it up as well. Moreover, the Central Electromagnetic Observation Station received at the same time an undecipherable radio message which obviously came from the foreign flying object so that Uju-Riel was vindicated and it was his turn to laugh at his superiors.

Admiral Wee-Nii called a full alarm for the entire Airfleet of His Excellency the President-King and ordered the airport commanders to hold their machines ready to take off. Meanwhile Iiy-Juur-Eelie was informed about the strange incident and requested to give his instructions. However Iiy-Juur-Eelie was in no rush to issue his commands until his Fleet Admiral advised him as to all the facts he had learned about the foreign flying object and that it had radioed a message which the experts were trying to decipher with the greatest urgency. So far nothing had happened anywhere on the planet which would indicate that the unknown craft approached with hostile intentions and, finally, that it was obvious, to judge from the flight performance of the alien craft, that it was far superior to anything his own fleet could muster.

It was mainly this last argument which caused Iiy-Juur-Eelie to give orders not to take any military measures against the aliens but to send signals from the airport in the vicinity of the capital asking them to land. He hoped that they would get the idea and follow his invitation.

Iiy-Juur-Eelie gave no sign of being unduly worried. This would have been below his dignity as President-King. However Admiral Wee-Nii considered it his business to be concerned about such matters and he felt great apprehension. The unidentified object was apparently a visitor from outer space. It was the first time for Wee-Nii and his race that they received a visit from another world. Indeed it was the first time that they would see members of a different race. Only Sey-Wuun and his crew had met such people in the colony where they endeavoured to produce grain but they had not yet returned home to their planet.

As most other people, Wee-Nii had certain expectations as to how the first visit of a stranger from the cosmos should take place. First, he imagined, they would receive some mysterious radio messages from the universe which would announce the impending visit. Then he would send one of his own spaceships to the point where the message came from in order to inspect the alien vehicle from close-by while simultaneously sounding state of alarm #1 on Heeninniy, Wee-Nii’s homeworld. Finally the Airfleet of His Excellency would ceremoniously escort the alien vessel to a festive reception with a proclamation and speeches on radio and television.

But what happened instead? The stranger came to Heeninniy like a thief in the night, puzzling the radar service and giving the men in charge a lesson in the inadequacy of their warning system which failed to detect the foreign ship earlier. Now the alien craft circled the entire planet like a spy before it decided to land some place.

Wee-Nii was too intelligent not to realize that the mentality of the aliens didn’t necessarily correspond to his own and that his personal opinions would not seem as obvious to another race. Furthermore, he could think of many explanations why a strange ship would choose such an unconventional, almost barbaric way to descend on Heeninniy without further ado. Perhaps such visits were a daily occurrence among these strangers and they thus considered any formal celebration to be unnecessary, in contrast with Wee-Nii’s concept of such a noteworthy event which he shared with everybody else on Heeninniy.

There was really no apparent reason to be alarmed, he concluded. "But," he said to Fij-Gul, "something doesn’t look right to me. We’ll have to keep our eyes open."

However Fij-Gul knew that Wee-Nii was always inclined to worry about things whether for good reasons or bad and so he didn’t take the admonishment to keep his eyes open too seriously.

* * * *

"I got a signal!" called Sheldrake, the young man Chellish had assigned to operate the radio. His French sounded a little awkward but it was the first day that Sheldrake had to speak French exclusively.

Chellish studied the signal on the oscillograph screen and noted that it showed no modulation whatsoever. It was a simple, electromagnetic impulse which was repeated at intervals of about 5 seconds.

"Find out where the signal comes from," Chellish ordered. "Since everything else is quiet, I assume that it is meant for us. They probably have received our message and may give us a sign to land."

His guess was soon confirmed. Sheldrake determined that the signal was emitted by some kind of a directional beam and that the transmitter was located in the vicinity of that monstrous collection of steeples which Chellish and Mullon had already identified on their first pass around Peep as the biggest of all cities on the planet.

"It must be a radio beacon," Chellish concluded. "Well, let’s go down!"

The Fair Lady stopped at an altitude of 40 kilometres above a fairly large landing field. Chellish activated an artificial field of gravitation around the ship and it floated down as slowly as a feather.

"We must give them a little time," Chellish grinned, "to prepare for our arrival. They probably are mighty surprised and frightened."

The Fair Lady had covered the distance from Grautier to Peep in a few hours. Most of the way had been traversed in high relativity flight and Chellish began to think that the extreme velocity of the ship would raise considerable doubt in the minds of the Whistlers that the Fair Lady had taken off from Grautier. The distance from Grautier to Peep measured at this time almost 700 million kilometres. A ship of the Whistlers would take at least 2 months to travel such a stretch. The vessel they had dispatched to collect the harvest would normally have stayed on Grautier at least 2 months—firstly, because the wheat had not yet been brought in, secondly to give new instructions, to unload more machinery, and a number of similar reasons. If the Whistlers entertained any notion that the Fair Lady might have come from Grautier, they would have to figure that it left at a time when their own spaceship was still there, a fact which they were bound to consider highly unlikely.

Chellish didn’t believe that it would occur to the Whistlers that their spaceship was lost. They would probably assume instead that perhaps the transmitter broke down or that something else prevented the captain from reporting. The idea that the vessel was captured or destroyed on Grautier would be the last they’d contemplate since they were a very proud race and extremely conceited.

No, there was as yet no reason to be concerned. If the Whistlers became suspicious later on, there would still be time to deal with them.

Chellish concentrated his attention on the city lying below the Fair Lady. They had encountered many such buildings on their trip around the planet and an enlarged picture had made it clear that these pointed conical columns served as dwellings. The peculiar structures resembled somewhat the termite towers on Earth or the stalagmites in a subterranean cave. The Whistlers didn’t seem to have a great sense of architectural beauty. The stalagmite-houses were the product of an architecture which was concerned with nothing but utility and showed no harmony at all. Chellish wondered what it looked like inside these buildings.

By the time the Fair Lady had descended to a height of 8 kilometres, Chellish noticed some kind of a procession leaving the southern end of the city and moving toward the north of the landing field. "The reception committee!" Chellish exclaimed. "Now we can go down a little faster."

The gravitation field, which held the Fair Lady like a protective hand and kept it from crashing to the ground, was reduced. The ship sank much quicker than before, creating a low-pressure zone in its wake into which the air rushed in with a whoosh.

Iiy-Juur-Eelie thought he had good reasons to welcome the strangers with a grandiose reception. Ever since the astronomic observatories of Heeninniy had been equipped with more efficient instruments, they had received some signals which the scientists claimed came from artificial transmitters erected by alien intelligent beings on other worlds. The observatories had classified 2 types of signals with certainty and had concluded that at least 2 other worlds existed in the neighbourhood of Heeninniy which were inhabited by intelligent beings.

Iiy-Juur-Eelie was a man who looked into the future. If there were other races living in the vicinity, they would make contact with each other as soon as their own or the space technology of the aliens had developed enough. Since there seemed to exist 2 alien races, it would be wise to establish friendly relations with at least one of them. A 3-sided constellation was, according to political science, not a very stable state of affairs. Disputes could occur very easily and if he had secured himself an ally, his position would be much more favourable.

Thus Iiy-Juur-Eelie had every intention of impressing the strangers with his civility so that when they returned to their home they could report they had found a valuable ally on Heeninniy.

His Excellency knew very little about the adventure on which Capt. Sey-Wuun had embarked a few months ago on one of the inner planets, Weelie-Wee. According to Sey-Wuun’s report, they had encountered merely a horde of primitive settlers, not an entire race. Sey-Wuun’s information did not indicate that the signals received by his observatories originated from Weelie-Wee as the primitive inhabitants of that planet possessed no powerful transmitters. Therefore, Iiy-Juur-Eelie had paid only scant attention to the mission to Weelie-Wee. This was a matter under the jurisdiction of the Airfleet which had been given the task of supplying food for its members because the job of feeding the 3 billion citizens of Heeninniy became more difficult all the time.

Iiy-Juur-Eelie hastened to erect some kind of a grandstand at the edge of the airfield and took his place on the highest platform with the highest dignitaries of the realm seated around him including the admirals of the Airfleet and Admiral Wee-Nii among them, as well as the high officers of the Army and Marine and the leading state officials. The grandstand was surrounded by a chain of secret police because Iiy-Juur was far from certain that all his subjects were lovingly devoted to him.

His Excellency was known for his wilfulness and his ruthless methods to exercise to the hilt the power granted him under the constitution. There were rumours to the effect that he sometimes exceeded the limits of his powers and governed like a king instead of President-King as was his duty under the law.

Having made all preparations to insure that the spectacle wouldn’t fail to have the desired effect on the strangers, Iiy-Juur-Eelie waited for the arrival of the unknown spaceship, ostensibly patient and dignified but inwardly seething with curiosity and excitement. He could already recognize that the vessel was as big as his 3 ships of the Peei-class—the only interplanetary spaceships Heeninniy possessed—and probably much more formidable. The terrible thought crossed his mind that he might not face people who were seeking allies but came to make demands—subjugation, tributes and the like. However he put the thought aside and decided to wait and see. There was no point in scaring himself prematurely.

* * * *

Chellish was highly pleased with his outfit. What the women of Grautier had designed and tailored looked very respectable and handsome and, what was more important, betrayed no similarity to the style worn on Earth with which the Whistlers might already be familiar after their visit to Grautier.

The Fair Lady had touched down with a spectacular vrooming noise and a heavy gust of wind whistling behind her which, to the delight of Chellish and his companions, blew into the faces of the colourful crowd on the grandstand and made their loose robes billow.

Sheldrake, Loewy and Krahl had already retreated to their hideouts. Chellish had impressed on them that they couldn’t dare show themselves and that they had to be absolutely sure that nobody was aboard the ship when they left their hiding place. As long as the Whistlers, who undoubtedly would come to visit the ship, failed to detect them, their presence was sufficient insurance that the Whistlers could not seize the Fair Lady in case it should come to some unpleasantries. The 3 boys knew every technical detail on the ship and could make life very miserable for the spindly creatures.

The delegation that left the Fair Lady a few minutes after the landing consisted of only 10 men. They were clothed in tight garments, reaching to their ankles, giving them the appearance of Tibetan monks. The weapons they carried were carefully concealed.

Due to the gravitation of no more than 0.7 it was rather difficult to proceed with the solemnity which the situation called for. Only Chellish had already learned to adapt himself and he moved with elegant grace and a stem face. But the other 9, Mullon not excluded, had great trouble keeping pace and taking steps which were no longer than one meter.

In addition the rarefied atmosphere caused them quite a bit of discomfort. The air pressure was little more than 0.5 atmospheres or about as much as on a mountain on Earth 5,000 meters high. They felt tired and were plagued by the ringing of their ears. Each quick movement—such as a hasty lifting of an arm to maintain their balance—drove dark veils before their eyes and caused their lungs to work hectically.

The grandstand was about 150 meters away from the spot where the Fair Lady had touched down and it took Chellish’s group 10 minutes to walk the short distance. Chellish stopped in front of the platform and looked up to the Whistler who occupied the highest seat and who presumably was the chief of the city if not the entire land. He raised both arms as a greeting, which caused him a considerable effort and made him breathe audibly. However his effort was rewarded. Iiy-Juur-Eelie understood his gesture and raised his arms as well. He looked rather ridiculous with his thin, 1½-meter-long arms and the small palms with 6 talon-like fingers. He held his arms leaned against his cone-shaped head as if he were afraid they might break off.

Next, Chellish pulled a roll of paper out of the pocket of his garment, opened it and began to read a little speech of salutation which he had written down previously. In his speech he claimed to be an envoy of the world of Aurigel which was the single planet circling the sun nearest to the Peep system. This neighbouring sun was 7 light-years away from Peep. Chellish took it for granted that the Whistlers didn’t know how many planets that sun had—nor did he know any better.

Besides this was of no importance at this moment. None of the Whistlers understood a word of his address. However Chellish noticed that several uniformed men who stood at the sidewalls of the platform took out small gadgets whose purpose it apparently was to record his words of greeting. They would probably use the recording to reconstruct the language of the alien guests with the aid of the electronic transmitters which the Whistlers had used already on Grautier in order to establish the first communication.

After Chellish had finished, Iiy-Juur-Eelie answered him in a squeaky voice. He said a few sentences, then rose and walked down the steps in the centre of the grandstand with measured demeanour. Everybody on the grandstand got up at the same time. Iiy-Juur-Eelie approached Chellish, stretched out his arms and put his hands on his shoulders with a slight bow. Since His Excellency was at least 2.60 meters tall it looked quite odd. Chellish was unable to put his own hands on the ruler’s shoulders although he had always considered himself a tall man at 1.85 meters; all he could do was to take a much deeper bow.

Iiy-Juur-Eelie now turned around and walked toward the left side of the grandstand, waving to Chellish to stay at his side. Chellish’s companions followed behind them and the dignitaries who had been sitting on the platform joined the procession. Chellish noticed that a number of vehicles were lined up not far from the grandstand. Evidently they were air-cushioned cars, as he saw no wheels. When Iiy-Juur-Eelie reached the first vehicle it lifted itself about 20 centimetres off the ground, blowing a hissing cloud of dust on both sides of its oval body.

The President-King and Chellish entered the first vehicle and Chellish’s friends were escorted to the other vehicles by the Whistler officers and officials. At a signal which seemed to come from a trumpet or a similar instrument, the column started to move and drove toward the city.

Chellish didn’t consider it impolite to look out the window in order to get an initial view of the city. He couldn’t speak the language of the Whistlers and Iiy-Juur-Eelie had no other means of conversing with his new guest. From time to time he spread his wide, thin-lipped mouth even farther in order to indicate a friendly smile.

Chellish very soon saw why the Whistlers used air-cushioned transports. There were no streets in the city in the sense the Terrans used the term. What ran there at the bottom of the gorge between the stalagmite-towers was fairly broad but very rough and without pavement. It looked as if the Whistlers had merely removed the grass when they built the city and called it a street without further improvement.

The towers also had an improvised look as Chellish observed after he recovered from his amazement at their tremendous height. The average height was 400 meters but many soared up to 600 or 700 meters. The stalagmites had the appearance of being piled up at random. Round windows were cut into the walls at irregular intervals as if each tenant had picked his opening wherever he liked it. A number of buildings showed sections of different colours which indicated that they had been built at different stages and at far apart times. Indeed there were also some truncated towers, structures which were only 80 or 100 meters high and were closed with a wide platform instead of the usual steeples. They were probably yet to be finished.

Above the streets there were bridges suspended between the towers on which many curious Whistlers had gathered to catch a glimpse of the passing column. Chellish noted that the uniformed men who accompanied the column in open cars at both sides and both ends paid special attention to these bridges. Were they afraid of an assassination?

There were few pedestrians in the streets and hardly any vehicles. Presumably the route travelled by the column had been cleared of all other traffic. Chellish guessed that the city must have about 4 million inhabitants and he couldn’t believe that the almost total absence of traffic in the centre of the city was a normal condition.

After a drive of about one hour the column turned into a broad highway—lined on both sides by tall trees resembling poplars—which led out of the city. The highway ended after about 5 kilometres at the foot of an especially high tower. The tower formed the point of a wedge whose flanks also consisted of towers. The structures were connected by numerous bridges of all sizes and shapes which made a unified complex of the 9 towers. Chellish had no doubt that it was the residence of the man sitting beside him.

A wide gateway opened at the base of the first tower through which the aircushion car floated into a brightly-lit hall. The other vehicles followed as Chellish reassured himself with a quick backward glance. Servants in splendid uniforms rushed forward from all sides and took their places at the doors of the vehicles.

Their initial goal had been reached: Chellish and his companions were inside the ‘palace’ of the President-King of Peep, or rather Heeninniy, although they didn’t know it at the moment.