"Have you any notion at all what they are doing or how they are doing it?" asked Tallis gently. 

 "None," MacMaine answered truthfully. "None at all, I swear to you." 

 "They don't even behave like Earthmen," said the fourth Kerothi, a thick-necked officer named Ossif. "They not only outfight us, they outthink us at every turn. Is it possible, General MacMaine, that the Earthmen have allies of another race, a race of intelligent beings that we don't know of?" He left unsaid the added implication: "And that you have neglected to tell us about?" 

 "Again," said MacMaine, "I swear to you that I know nothing of any third intelligent race in the galaxy." 

 "If there were such allies," Tallis said, "isn't it odd that they should wait so long to aid their friends?" 

 "No odder than that the Earthmen should suddenly develop superweapons that we cannot understand, much less fight against," Hokotan said, with a touch of anger. 

 "Not 'superweapons'," MacMaine corrected almost absently. "All they have is a method of making their biggest ships indetectable until they're so close that it doesn't matter. When they do register on our detectors, it's too late. But the weapons they strike with are the same type as they've always used, I believe." 

 "All right, then," Hokotan said, his voice showing more anger. "One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that's enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of this, General MacMaine?" 

 Before MacMaine could answer, Tallis said, "Don't be ridiculous, Hokotan! If he had known that such a weapon existed, would he have been fool enough to leave his people? With that secret, they stand a good chance of beating us in less than half the time it took us to wipe out their fleet—or, rather, to wipe out as much of it as we did." 

 "They got a new fleet somewhere," said young Loopat, almost to himself. 

 Tallis ignored him. "If MacMaine deserted his former allegiance, knowing that they had a method of rendering the action of a space drive indetectable, then he was and is a blithering idiot. And we know he isn't." 

 "All right, all right! I concede that," snapped Hokotan. "He knows nothing. I don't 

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