Langford wet his dry lips. Reaching inside his resplendent uniform, he removed a small, shining object which he set down at the edge of his superior's desk. "They shot this out at us when I ordered them to stand by for boarding," he said. "It was contained in a small, translucent capsule which I picked up with a magnetic trawl. It's just a model in miniature, but take a good look at it, sir; would you care to make the acquaintance of a creature like that in the flesh?"

Commander Gurney's eyes widened and his mouth twitched slightly. "In the name of all that's unholy, Langford, what is it?" he muttered.

Langford shook his head. "I wish I knew, sir. It looks quite a bit like a praying mantis. A little, metallic praying mantis six inches tall. But it doesn't behave like one!"

The statuette on Gurney's desk seemed chillingly lifelike in the cold light. It had been fashioned with flawless craftsmanship; its upraised forelimbs were leaf green, its abdomen salmon pink, and its gauzy wings shone with a dull, metallic luster as Langford turned it carefully about.

Gurney couldn't help noticing, with a little shudder, that its mouth-parts consisted of a cutting mandible, and a long, coiled membrane like the ligula of a honeybee. Huge, compound eyes occupied the upper half of the metal insect's face.

Gurney's hand had gone out, and was about to close on the little statue; but something in Langford's stare made him change his mind. As his hand whipped back he fastened his gaze on Langford's face with the ire of a peevish child denied access to a jampot.

"What in blazes has that to do with your failure to obey orders?" he demanded, with explosive vehemence. "That ship must have used an interstellar space-warp drive to appear out of nowhere in the middle of the Asteroid Belt. And you deliberately let it slip away from you!"

Langford shut his eyes before replying. He saw again the myriad stars of space, the dull red disk of Mars and the far-off gleam of the great outer planets. He saw the luminous hull of the alien ship looming up out of the void. An instant before, the viewpane had been filled with a sprinkling of very distant stars with a faint nebulosity behind them. The ship had appeared with the suddenness of an image forming on a screen, out of the dark matrix of empty space.

Langford leaned forward, a desperate urgency in his stare. "Mere alienage doesn't justify the crime of murder, 

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