Watching them eat so voraciously and hugely, Jonnie tried to figure out what genetic lines such creatures might come from. They reminded him of something and he sought to place it. Then he recalled a fish that a pilot who was passing through Victoria had shown them. The pilot had been downed by fuel failure in the Indian Ocean and had ejected with a life raft. While waiting to be picked up he was attacked by these fish. When he was rescued, they had shot one of the fish with a cannon and picto-recorded it. It had been pretty big. What had he called it? Jonnie tried to think. They had looked it up in a man-book. Ah, a shark! That had been the name! Yes. These small gray men had a similar skin, similar teeth. Maybe they were evolved from sharks that had become sentient.
It finally came down to tea. It wasn't that the small gray men couldn't eat any more. It was that Chief Chong-won had run out of food! The tea was served, and the first small gray man asked with just a trace of worry whether this was "yarb tea.” He was reassured that it was just plain green tea, a fact that seemed to bring relief.
They sat back and smiled at Jonnie. They said that was the best dinner they had had in some time, maybe ever, and Chong-won slid out to tell and please the cook.
Under their gaze, Jonnie thought to himself that now they were finished with all the food in sight, they were going to try to eat him! But no, that was vaporing. They were quite pleasant, really. Now maybe he could find out what they were all about, what they really wanted.
“You know,” said the original small gray man, “about these hostile forces– your trouble here was really your defenses. Cheap trash. But that's the Psychlos for you. They never put their money in good defenses. Personnel were cheap. They'd rather buy half-a-dozen new females or a ton or two of kerbango than proper armaments.”
He looked at Jonnie as though about to apprise him of something utterly devastating. “You know how much those antiaircraft guns you use cost?
Less than five thousand credits. Cheap trash! They won't even shoot up to two hundred thousand feet. Bargain-basement, rummage-sale armaments. They probably bought them from some war surplus, used. And some executive put the new price on the books and pocketed the difference.”
“What should a proper antiaircraft gun cost?” said Jonnie to keep it going.
The newest small gray man thought a moment. Then he brought a small gray book out of his vest pocket and opened it. The page seemed to get bigger and he scanned down it with a little reader glass. “Ah, here's one. 'Surface/space combination repulsion, multicomputer firing defense cannon: maximum range 599 miles, 15,000 shots a minute, simultaneous tracking of 130 vessels or 2,300 bombs, destruction potential A– 13 (that's capital ship penetration), cost before discounts, C 123,475 plus freight and installation.' Now batteries of those located around your strong points would have handled that entire combined force or kept them so high up they could not have launched atmosphere crafts.”
The original small gray man agreed. “Yes, that was the main trouble. The Psychlos were both improvident and credit-pinching at the same time. I don't think they even kept up this planet's defenses.”
Jonnie could agree with that. He felt he was going to find out something about these fellows now that they were talking. Keep them talking! “Well, just at a guess,” said Jonnie, “what would you say proper defenses for this planet would cost?”
He had started something!
Both small gray men put their heads together. The original one started pulling all sorts of little things out of his pocket, looking into them and finding things. The newer arrival had a large ring on his left finger and at first Jonnie thought he was simply fiddling with it: not so; he was twisting and tapping it with sudden little jerks, and a long thread, so thin as to be nearly invisible, was coiling out of the ring.
They were very intense and their voices murmured and blended together. “...thirty space probes...maintained carrier wave probe warning beams...fifteen space drones, automatic firing at all nonsignal identified craft...cost of equipping terrestrial craft with identification beacons...2,000 atmosphere beacons...256 Mark 50 combat fighters...400 fly-away, antipersonnel tanks...7,000 antipersonnel road barricades...one hundred city cable defenses with rectractable gates...fifty heath/color search drones...fifty automatic target destroy surface drones....”
They were finished. The newer one snapped off the thread at the ring and tapped it at the end, and with a little pop! the thread expanded into a long sheet of paper like a tape. He gave it a small flick and it landed in front of the original small gray man. He picked it up, scanned the figures on it, and then looked at the end.
“With spare parts and freight,” he said, “it comes to C500,962,878,431 at two parts in eleven annual interest rate, plus an estimated C285,000,006 annual military and maintenance personnel salaries, housing and equipage.”
He tossed the long tape across the table to Jonnie and concluded, “There it is. An efficient and economical planetary defense system. All top-of-the-line merchandise. Good for a hundred years. That's the sort of thing you should have had! And you can still have it!”
That was C498,960,878,431 more than Earth had! It had made him realize how broke Earth was. Now was the time to find out more about these two. “I surely appreciate your information. If you will excuse me, what are you two gentlemen? Arms salesmen?”
He might as well have dropped a bomb on them, they looked so startled! Then they looked at each other and both of them laughed.
“Oh, I am so sorry,” said the original small gray man. “It is so terribly impolite of us. You see, we are quite well known in our respective areas. And we know so much about you, in fact, know you so well, that it just never occurred to us that we never introduced ourselves!
“I am His Excellency Dries Gloton. And I am very pleased to meet you, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler."
Jonnie shook his hand. It was a dry hand, quite rough.
“And this,” said His Excellency, “is Lord Voraz. Lord Voraz, Sir Lord Jonnie Tyler.”
Jonnie shook his dry, rough hand and said, “It is really just Jonnie Tyler, Your Lordship. I have no titles.”
“We choose to doubt that,” said Lord Voraz.
His Excellency said, “Lord Voraz is the Central Director, Chief Executive Officer, and Overlord of the Galactic Bank.”
Jonnie blinked but bowed.
Lord Voraz said, “Dries here likes to call himself the chief collections executive but it is a sort of bank joke. He is actually the Branch Manager of the Galactic Bank for this sector. You might have noticed a time or two that I stepped on his toes accidentally. A Branch Manager has total authority for his sector and is a bit jealous of his prerogatives.” He laughed, teasing his junior. “Your planet comes in his sector and dealings about it are entirely up to him. He's the one who has to show a profit for his area. Now I, I am simply here because the emissaries have met. These are very troubled-”
Dries Gloton cut him off sharply. “His Lordship can't be expected to know all the ins and outs of sector business. He does very well to keep up with universes.”
Lord Voraz laughed again, “Oh, dear, I am really sorry we worried you. Why, we have been looking-”
Dries cut him off again, “We're just here to help, Sir Lord Jonnie. By the way, would you like to start an account? A personal account?” He was fishing in his pockets for the materials. "We can give you a very low number and absolute confidence assured.”