The Hockner super-lieutenant who commanded the star-shaped craft looked a little supercilious with his monocle and excessive amount of gold braid. The long, noseless face portrayed what passed for disdain among his people in the Duraleb System.

The Bolbod was just plain plug-ugly, as they always were, bigger than Psychlos but sort of shapeless. One wondered how they ever handled anything at all– their “hands” were always clenched into fists. The high sweater neck almost met the bill of his exaggerated cap. The Bolbods considered insignia beneath their dignity but the small gray man knew he was Gang Leader Poundon, commanding the cylinder-shaped spacecraft. He certainly had a low opinion of all the rest as effete degenerates.

“All right!” snapped the Tolnep. “Are our races at war or aren't they?”

The Hawvin said, “I don't have any information that they are or aren't! But that doesn't mean that they aren't. It would not be the first time a Hawvin ship came peacefully onto station only to be raked by a sneaking Tolnep.”

“Your Excellency!” snapped the Tolnep, suddenly including the small gray man. “Do you have any information that the Tolneps and Hawvins are at war?”

It was a military matter but this could fringe on the political.

“The courier ship that met me here did not mention it,” he said tiredly. Maybe one of the crew had some different brand of indigestion tablets.

No, he didn't think they would. Mello-gest was all that was sold these days. He wished they'd stop wrangling.

“You see!” hissed the Tolnep half-captain. “No war exists. Yet you come in here denting my plates in an unprovoked assault-”

“Did I really dent your plates?” said the Hawvin, abruptly interested.

“Here,” said the Hockner super-lieutenant. “Here now. You are both completely off the subject of the strange interceptor. If you two fellows want to draw off somewhere and batter away at each other, that's your business, isn't it? But who and what was that interceptor?”

The Bolbod snorted, “Couldn't be anything but Psychlo."

“I know, old fellow,” said the Hockner, adjusting his monocle, “but I’ve looked

It up and it isn't listed under Psychlo military craft.” He held a recognition book to the screen: “Known Types of Psychlo War Craft.” It was of course in Psychlo. All of them spoke Psychlo and the whole of their cross-communication was in Psychlo, since they didn't speak each others' native tongues. “It isn't listed here.”

The Hawvin was glad to drop the subject of his attack on the Tolnep, no matter how surprised he'd been to find a Tolnep ship here. I've never seen one like it.”

The Bolbod was more practical. “Why did it veer away the moment you stopped shooting?”

They pondered that for a while. Then the Hockner adjusted his monocle and said, “I rather think I have it! He supposed that our attention would be distracted and that this,” he snorted, " 'battle' would knock out some of us and he'd be able to mop up the damaged remainder.”

They talked about this for a while. The small gray man listened politely to their military theories. It was none of his concern. They finally came to the conclusion that that was what it was all about. The interceptor had come up, ready to take advantage of the “battle” and destroy the remainder left over when they were in a damaged condition.

“I think they must be very clever,” said the Hockner. “Probably they have other interceptors here and they're ready and waiting.”

“I could have eaten that one with one bite,” said the Hawvin.

“I could have knocked it out with one punch,” said the Bolbod. "If they were strong they would have come up here and smashed us up some days ago. I don't think they're Psychlos and I never before heard of any race that had that torch insignia. So I say they are very weak. I don't know why we just don't go down and wipe them out. As a combined force!”

A combined force was a brand-new idea. The three others had always considered Bolbods rather stupid, if strong, and they looked at him on their viewscreens with a dawning respect.

“We've never, any of us,” said the Hockner, “made any real dent in the Psychlos. But it does seem to me that they are not really Psychlos. Strange ship, strange insignia. So possibly it would just be an afternoon's work to go down as a combined force-'

“Knock them out and divide the loot,” finished the Tolnep.

This was verging on the political. So the small gray man said, “And what if they are the one?”

This was what they were here to determine. They chewed it over. They finally came to a unanimous conclusion: they would operate as a combined force. Any newcomer would be invited. They would wait for the return of the courier ship the small gray man had sent out even though it might not return for months. If it brought news that the one had been found elsewhere, this “combined force” would go down, knock the planet out, and divide the loot among them to recompense them for their time. They didn't lay out any system for dividing the loot for each had his own ideas of what would happen when that moment came. The plan was agreed to.

“What if something happens in the meanwhile to prove it is the one?” the small gray man asked. Violence, violence; all these military people ever thought about was violence and death.

Well, they decided, that was sort of political, and they would play it by ear. But also if it were the one, probably it ought to be knocked out so the same plan applied.

It was the first time the small gray man had ever seen independent commanders of traditionally hostile ships reach a firm agreement on something. But these were very unusual times.

When they clicked off their viewscreens, the small gray man reached for another pill of Mello-gest to help his indigestion and then put it back in the bottle.

He thought he'd go down and visit that old woman again. Maybe she had an antidote yarb tea.

Their heads were bent together in the dull green reflection of the viewers. They were in a small, converted, lead-lined storage room in the lowest level of the African minesite. Jonnie was getting his first look at the fruits of earlier work.

There were ten days' worth of discs and it was a considerable pile. Dunneldeen had explained that he couldn't come earlier: there were lots of pilots graduating and needing their final check-out flights and it would have been suspicious to leave America at a busy peak. He had also brought fourteen new pilots to Africa and Jonnie and Stormalong could nurse them through their advanced combat here. They were good lads– Swedes and Germans. Ker was going full blast training machine operators; every tribe seemed to want a blade scraper and flatbeds for buses. Brown Limper was selling the tribes equipment even from their own nearby minesites and they had to have operators. Ore carriers were busy lugging machinery over the globe and they had to have pilots. Angus had come back with Dunneldeen for he was finding it too hard not to shoot Lars Thorenson on sight.

There was also the matter of page one.

Jonnie skimmed through the beginnings of Terl’s reoccupancy. It was enough to know that that crucial hour after he had left had really been pay dirt. They'd planted thirty-two false bugs and even feeders and recorders, and there was Terl big as life dumping them on his desk, convinced. When he saw that Terl was apparently using a mine radio to detect feeder channels to the recorders, he had a moment's qualm, but then he realized their main feeder was a ground wave.

A false bottom to the cabinets! He hadn't suspected that, for they simply looked armored. And this huge, thick book he was bringing out...about three feet wide and two feet high and seven inches thick and on the thinnest paper he had ever seen. Thousands of pages!