The interstellar liner came in at a very beautiful interstellar city.
A city made by hollowing out some small meteorite and building it over.
Outside it lay a vast star-shield canopy, so that from a distance it seemed a city hung within a crystal ball.
Zhao Chen came down from the liner.
He looked about him.
And could see that along the gallery from the liner's berth to the city's entrance, soldiers stood watch at intervals.
It seemed the Alliance valued this banquet highly.
For this banquet bore upon the peace between all the parties within the Alliance.
"Good day; your identity to be verified here, if you please. And all thermal weapons upon your person to be set down here." At one of the gates a woman receptionist was receiving them one by one.
Soon it came to Zhao Chen's turn.
Zhao Chen brought out his identity card.
Beep.
At the sound, the receptionist saw Zhao Chen's particulars as well.
"Oh! You are that legendary interstellar fighter pilot!" The receptionist looked at Zhao Chen in astonishment, and just then there were little stars in both her eyes.
Zhao Chen smiled modestly.
He set the laser pistol he carried upon the tray beside her.
Then brought out the hilt of his light-blade and asked, "Must this be handed in as well?"
The receptionist shook her head. "That is not needed. And then you have only to walk through the gate here."
Zhao Chen did as she said and walked through the gate.
The whole inspection went smoothly.
"This is your guide card for the banquet. Upon it is the number of the room you are lodged in, and the seat you will take at the banquet to come. If anything is unclear, you may inquire at the number upon it," the receptionist explained to him, all warmth.
"Thank you."
Zhao Chen took it and walked on.
But that receptionist's eyes stayed upon him a long while, and did not move away.
Zhao Chen had not gone far when Song Qingshan, who had come in ahead and was waiting there, laid an arm across his shoulder.
Since that one drinking aboard the liner, Song Qingshan's manner toward Zhao Chen had grown warmer still.
One who did not know would have thought them fast friends.
And Song Qingshan did indeed put on no airs whatever before Zhao Chen.
Zhao Chen looked over the guide card in his hand, and suddenly found that there was a little slip of paper upon it.
And on the slip a line of numbers was written.
"Oho. It seems the young lady likes you well enough." Song Qingshan, beside him, had seen it too, and looked at Zhao Chen teasingly.
He knew that string of numbers for a communications-app number.
When a girl gives you that of her own accord, the meaning needs no saying.
Zhao Chen laughed helplessly. "I only fly an interstellar fighter. I do not command an interstellar warship. A thing like this she ought rather to have given you."
But Song Qingshan shook his head. "Those who do reception work know their own minds well enough. They cannot do it forever, and every one of them wants a good match. But look too high, and the man will never in the world marry you, a mistress at the most, and who knows how many are in the queue ahead of you. So the most of them will choose an officer of fairly high place, who has ability, and whom one is not wholly unfit to aspire to. Above all a rising man out of the lower ranks, such as yourself. For to fly an interstellar fighter as well as it can be flown is no common thing besides!"
Zhao Chen gave a helpless smile, and after they had turned a corner, dropped the slip into a sweeping robot beside them.
"What? She is not to your taste?" Song Qingshan looked at him in surprise.
"I do not care for feelings with so strong a purpose behind them," Zhao Chen said, having found an excuse.
Nor did Song Qingshan talk further on the point.
For to his mind such things were long since the common way of the world.
An excellent man will naturally have women pursuing him without end.
"Your room is next to mine. The banquet does not formally begin for two hours yet. I have some business to see to first. If you would like to look about you, there is a map upon the guide card I gave you just now; you may see what you please. This interstellar city is not the Alliance's largest, but it stands on the frontier, and has no little strange scenery besides. Only do not linger too long. And if you have no wish to look about, go back to your room and rest well." Song Qingshan gave Zhao Chen his instructions and went.
Zhao Chen, for his part, chose to walk about the interstellar city.
The city was very large.
Besides those attending the banquet there were in fact a great many others.
Only that, the banquet requiring it, certain districts of the city were under military control.
The place where Zhao Chen and the rest had come in just now lay within the controlled districts.
As Zhao Chen strolled.
He passed an open-air bar upon an artificial beach, and marked that something was amiss at one of the tables.
Two or three men were gathered about a beautiful woman who sat drinking.
From those leering looks there was no need to guess what was in these men's heads.
And the woman paid them no attention whatever, but looked out at the sea in the distance and drank in silence.
Zhao Chen had not meant to trouble himself over it.
But he saw one of the men quietly tip something into the woman's glass.
Zhao Chen frowned slightly.
He walked on a few steps, and stopped.
Then turned about and went straight over.
The woman was on the point of drinking the drugged wine, and the men beside her wore looks of hunger.
They had never in the world thought to meet with goods of this quality here.
They did not know what the woman's standing was.
But they themselves came of great families, and this woman had no bodyguard whatever with her, so she was likely of no great family either.
Some young lady of a minor house, they supposed.
Goods of this kind you play with, and pay out a sum afterward, and the minor houses dare say nothing.
Of this sort of thing they had done more than they could count.
But this time something unexpected happened.
Just as those red lips came near the wine,
a hand took hold of the glass.
"Miss, this wine must not be drunk."
Zhao Chen took the glass from her and spoke coldly.
This Cheng Yaojin[1] springing out mid-road had spoiled these men's business for them.
They could not, naturally, let the fellow go.
"What do you mean by it, boy!"
"Boy, don't you know what we are? I advise you not to meddle in what doesn't concern you!"
"Damn you, boy, you dare spoil your betters' business. I think you have no wish to live."
One of them, hot-tempered, snatched up a bottle from beside him,
and swung it down at Zhao Chen's head.
The looked-for scene — the head struck, the blood flying — did not appear.
No.
It should rather be said that the manner of opening the thing had altered.
The man found the bottle gone from his hand.
"Is this what you're looking for?" Zhao Chen gave a shake to the bottle that had somehow appeared in his own.
And then brought it straight down on the man's head.