Therbis until the fleet gets here, and I want to get back to Earth. I can't give you any answers 'til then."

Kerrman was on Earth, and he wasn't entirely unaware of what Parmay was working on. Kerrman, in fact, knew bloody well what it was. But he kept his mouth shut and applied a few ideas of his own.

Finally, word came that Parmay was on his way back from Therbis.

When he landed, the Directors of Earth were waiting for him, and two days later he was ready to appear before the assembled Directorate.

The fourteen Directors waited quietly for him to speak. The vast silence that filled the room seemed almost a little too big for it, as though even a slight noise would not be heard if it were to be made. Pol Enson, the Speaker, looked at the others, then at Parmay.

"Okay, Romm; blaze away. I'm not a psych man, and I don't quite understand what you're driving at, but I hope you're right."

"I think I am," Parmay answered. "I've checked into it from every conceivable angle, and everything fits—there isn't one single unexplainable factor.

"We contacted the ship of the aliens. It went into hypersee. Then it attacked. Point one.

"Ask yourselves: Why did it attack? And then ask: Why did we attack?" He paused, watching them, then went on. "Why didn't we both get the hell out of there?"

The Directors frowned and waited.

"Keeping that in mind," Parmay continued, "let's look at our method of checking a system for the presence of aliens. We looked for modulated electromagnetics; we never found any. One explanation was that there weren't any aliens. But there's another explanation that fits the picture even better.

"They didn't put out any because they don't know anything about them in communication!"

The frowns of the Directorate became puzzled.

"Let's take another tack," Parmay went on. "Our ionic disruptors are supposed to turn any metal into an incandescent gas. But they hardly touched the enemy ship. Why? Because it was a non-conductor! Plastics, gentlemen, plastics strong enough to construct a spaceship hull of them. And that's even stronger than you think.

"But why plastics? Why not metal? That's 

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