Kiffer said. "It's obvious. Their own weapon backfired on them, and left the Enlissa ship incapable of doing any looting. I figured that out a long time ago."

"Oh, did you?" asked Roysland smoothly. "Then did you figure out why the Enlissa didn't test the thing before they used it?"

Kiffer shrugged. "Who knows? What do I know about alien psychology?"

"You don't have to know anything about psychology of any kind; all you have to know is a common, ordinary law of species survival. Any race that takes a weapon into battle without testing it thoroughly, doesn't survive very long."

Kiffer ran the tips of his fingers across his lower lips. "True; but maybe they were suicide squads—or maybe they have a hospital ship following them to pick them up and cure them. After all, Bilford has this cure of his working pretty well now; if the Enlissa invented this thing, they probably know how to counter its effects.

"Besides, you didn't think we'd tested the aJ guns thoroughly. And we're still surviving."

Roysland turned to look at Kiffer, and his face was definitely sneering. "Kiffer, there are times when your thinking has all the clarity and lucidness of a hunk of obsidian.

"There's a difference between the lack of testing of the aJ gun and the Enlissa's not thoroughly testing the mindjammer. There's a difference between looking for something you could logically expect and not finding something that you don't even suspect the existence of."

Kiffer nodded. "Sure; I see what you mean. But that simply means that they don't have any way of shielding the effect—so they have a hospital ship trailing them."

Roysland lay back again and closed his eyes. "Obsidian," he said. Then, after a moment, "One: Why do they sacrifice a crew—even if it's only for a short time? Two: Why don't they use such an efficient weapon against ships that blast them out of the sky? Three: Why do they come in at a ship without firing anything at all?

"Until your hypothesis answers all of those questions—and a lot more besides—it isn't worth a damn."

Kiffer chewed at his upper lip and then looked at his wrist watch. "If you're going to test that thing in an hour, you'd better call Eckisster now."

Roysland sighed deeply. "O.K.; I'll call 

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