sir!" he said. "Attacking an alien race without weighing the outcome would have been an act of criminal folly, charged with great danger to ourselves."

Commander Gurney shook his head in angry disagreement. "Just how would you define murder, Langford?" he demanded. "If a highly intelligent buzzsaw came at you would you bare your throat?"

Langford ignored the question. "Violence breeds violence, sir," he said, with patient insistence. "Suppose the shoe were on the other foot. Suppose the inhabitants of another planet attacked you without giving you a chance to prove your friendliness?"

Langford's eyes held a dogged conviction. "Remember, sir—to issue a warning is an act of forbearance. No reasonable man could mistake a warning for an aggressive act. If their weapons are superior to ours, or they are superior to us in other, truly terrifying ways, they proved their friendliness by warning us. Would you have had me attack their ship without studying that warning?"

Gurney's eyes had returned to the statue. He seemed fascinated by the glitter of its folded wings. He had a sudden vision of the metal insect spreading its wings and taking off with a low, horrible droning.

Suddenly there was a dull throbbing in the Patrol commander's temples. A frightful dread took possession of him, so that he could hardly breathe; in his mind's gaze he saw a vast, stationary plain that seemed to hang suspended in midair above a fiery sea. Sweeping straight toward him, dark against the glow, were hundreds of flying mantis shapes with their arms upraised in the glow.

Gurney shuddered and gripped the arms of his chair. He transfixed Langford with an accusing stare. "Man, if you'd engaged them in open combat we'd at least know where we stand! We could have put the entire patrol on the alert. Now they've given us the slip and may show up anywhere, armed with weapons that could wipe out civilization overnight."

"I chose what I believed to be the lesser of two evils, sir," Langford said, stepping closer to the desk. His eyes rested briefly on the metal insect; then they returned to Gurney's face.

"There were two metal insects in that capsule, sir. I'm going to show you exactly what happened to the one I experimented with."

Langford's forefinger whipped out as he spoke, striking the little statue sharply on its folded wing membranes. For an instant nothing happened; then, with appalling 

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