He came to the platform, stepped up, moved behind the table, and turned.

At that instant a mine spotlight placed just above the door flamed on. He stood there in black and silver and yet a blaze of living color.

He did not speak. Feet apart, not blocked from their view by the table, he held the silver wand between his two hands and simply looked at them with a stern and even disdainful expression. Dominant.

This was impressive enough to the emissaries. Even though they were used to pomp and tended to discount it, they would have been respectful of this display. But there was something else.

That beast on the helmet! It looked alive. The trick of the light, the play of the silver metal that flashed, the glowing red coals of eyes, whatever it was it looked alive. Was he wearing a live winged beast on his helmet?

Lord Schleim would have none of it. Unfortunately there had been a slight slip which played directly into his hands. When one word meant several things in Psychlo, it required a slight change of inflection or tone to make it have the different meaning. The word “spirit” in Psychlo could also mean “mind,” “angel,” or “devil,” and although the communicator had used the right inflection for “spirit,” Lord Schleim chose to accept a different inflection.

The Tolnep sprang up as though striking from cover. “Lords and august emissaries,” he said with an acid hiss, “I challenge the right of this devil to speak! We have seen no credentials. We-'

“Sir,” said Jonnie. “I could not quite hear you. What did you say?”

Lord Schleim whirled on him. He began savagely, “I said-'

“Ah, yes, yes, yes,” said Jonnie, waving his wand. “I beg your pardon, your lordship. It was merely your uncouth Tolnep accent. Quite provincial. Can you understand him, my lords?”

They laughed. It was true that Schleim had a bit of an accent, due probably to his fangs and having to hiss. Tolneps were really quite rural; they had only one planet and that was quite distant from the center of things.

“You devil!” hissed Schleim.

"Uh, uh, uh," said Jonnie. “No violence in such a meeting. I am quite certain I nor the truly worthy emissaries in this gathering desire your ejection from it.”

Then before Schleim would retaliate, something else happened. The wand, which had been tapping Jonnie's palms, suddenly pointed in the direction of Schleim's feet. It had a small beam of light set in the end of it and it flashed on. (It was a light used to show dust in a mine shaft and it made a very thin white pencil of light, like a pointer.)

Jonnie looked a bit incredulous. Then he turned his head clear off to the side as though to hide a laugh. The light switched off.

Schleim looked down. He had to stretch for he had a bit of a paunch.

What had this devil seen?

Then Lord Schleim saw them. His boots! Instead of wearing his proper, scaled, glittering green boots, he was wearing old, rough blue boots. Dirty blue boots. His valet! In the rush of getting him off, his clumsy, damned valet had put the wrong boots on him. Oh, when he got home...when he got home he would have the oaf punctured! Worse. Dragged through the streets and bitten to death by small children.

But Jonnie was addressing the emissaries. “I must apologize to you, my lords. I pray you to overlook my discourtesy in arriving late. But I am sure you will understand when I tell you that I was looking for a point of law.” He looked at them in a kindly and deferential fashion, laid down the wand on the invisible table, and tapped the top of the law book. (The manners and phrases of the old

Chinko instruction discs were coming in handy now! At first when he entered he had felt stiff and unnatural, artificial and affected, but suddenly it felt as though he had been doing this sort of thing all his life.)

“No one,” he continued, “could possibly expect such noble and such highly titled and credentialed lords to experience an uncomfortable trip, nor to convene upon such a lowly and undeserving planet, for the petty purpose of adjudicating the minor differences of some back planet squabble.”

The delegates sat up. This was more like it. This is what they had been thinking all the time. Hear, hear!

Sir Robert was thunderstruck. What was this lad up to? The war not important? Their strong points caving in, their friends dying, and he could say it wasn't important? He looked at the two small gray men. They were both sitting there smiling, a bit vacant but smiling. They hadn't been smiling before and Sir Robert knew for a fact that Jonnie hadn't talked with them, so they knew no more than he. But he had to restrain himself from jumping up to cry out that this was an important war. One point: these emissaries in their jewels and flashing clothes, strange faces and feelers, were all bobbing their heads and settling down for a real conference.

“No,” continued Jonnie. “It would be an insult to the mighty states you represent to call you here on something as trivial as repelling pirates!”

Lord Schleim started to slither up out of his chair. He was about to shout this devil down and force him to mend his language when he saw those eyes looking again at his boots. But it wasn't really the glance at the boots that stopped Lord Schleim. He recognized with diplomatic shrewdness that this devil could fall into a trap of his own digging. It was a very simple matter to prove that the attacking Tolnep ships were fully commissioned, legal ships and officers of the Tolnep navy. So let the devil plow on for now. He'd fang him shortly. Hah, the fellow was no real opponent after all!

“Such regal representatives of kings and governments,” continued Jonnie, “should– and if I am wrong, please correct me– convene on real points of treaties and Intergalactic law. And on these their expertise cannot be seriously challenged or questioned.”

Hear, hear. True. Naturally. You have a point. Pray continue! The emissaries, all except for the combatants, were sitting up, interested. And all combatant representatives began to look uneasy. All except Lord Schleim who was beginning to feel confident– this devil was going to dig a hole for himself. There was one trouble here for Lord Schleim: each time that devil moved it made lights flash off his buttons, and Tolneps had to wear filters to convert to ordinary visible spectrum, so every flash of a button overwhelmed the power of the filter and he was getting a headache. He wished he could make them turn off that spotlight they had on this creature.

Jonnie was sweeping on. “The definition of the category of 'pirate' as opposed to the definition of 'military force' is a critical question. I am sure that, from time to time, even in the best-organized, paid, and regulated military forces, elements of navies or even merchant ships have mutinied or gone astray or been misled and have turned pirate, defying the benign and responsible authority of their own governments.”

Oh, yes. Many instances. Just last month in these troubled times, a squadron of spaceships had mutinied at Oxentab. Lots of them in history. An old point, the emissaries agreed. Lot of stories written about it. Go on.

“So,” continued Jonnie, “to protect legitimate authority such as that which you represent,” (pleased faces except for the combatants), “and to really be able to cope with piracy when it occurs, the definition must be clarified. And this can only be done by an august body such as yours in the form of a formal treaty.”

Good idea. Correct. Right. Very glum combatants, except Schleim who was certain now this devil would shortly be sent down in flames.

Jonnie opened the Psychlo dictionary to a marked place. "We know that the Psychlo language is a composite of many tongues, even your own individual languages, and was not in fact a language generated solely by the Psychlos. It is a universal tongue because it was taken from many universes, which is the only reason we so generally speak it.”