Convinced. The conviction—manipulation, too....

"Only partly, Earthman. We said we are friendly, and we are. We have calmed you and erased your fear. From this point on, we will use this instrument only for communication."

And then he felt the fear in him again, gnawing, and his body was again damp and cold. But he had control, now. Control enough to speak.

They stood before him, immobile, watching.

Somewhere, Johnny Love found his voice.

"Look, I've been through this 'friendly' act before...." He hesitated, and they did not try to interrupt him. "Well don't just stand there!" The fear was suddenly turning to the bitter anger of frustration, they had him whipped, and he was tired. "Tell me why! You stick that thing into my head when I'm blasting for home. You force me to drop back. You blow up my ship. Real friendly! Real sports!" For a moment he had run out of words, and again they made no effort to answer him. "All right! I don't understand you—I don't know what you want. But nobody is trying to hurt you, nobody's after your little desert paradise. We had an idea, that's all. We thought we could make it work. People have been talking 'go to Mars' on my planet for longer than most of 'em can remember. So we finally gave it a whirl! Sorry!"

He looked at them hard, then, and thought that there was something almost like a smile on the face of one. Smile, then, damn you....

"We want nothing, Earthman, but to prevent from happening on your planet the thing that happened on this. If they succeed in destroying you as they have us, then this System will always be under their heel, and we shall never be rid of them. Understand, their numbers were too few ever to conquer a planet with a civilization as large and as highly organized as that of Earth, by physical means.

"Knowing that, we—they call us gypsies, nomads, desert-scum today—we were not too alarmed when they landed here two centuries ago. We were glad to take from them, without paying a price. We were awed by their gifts. Their papers and their books, which would show us how to rebuild our waning civilization—advance us a thousand years in less than fifty; restore to us our lost arts.... And compared to you, we were so very few.

"In return, they said that all they wanted was permission to set up a research site. They told us they were a scientific expedition from far out-System. Aldeberan, they said. Part of a vast exploratory program which they had been conducting for centuries.

"We believed them—why not? One day, we thought, we too will be in Space. And with that day would begin one of the greatest projects of exploration that our race had ever known. So we agreed, and gladly."

"Hold it, hold it! 'They'—who the hell are 'they'? You can spare the suspense...."

And then there was no more words. The pictures formed in his mind as before, only stronger, now, and there were no details left out.

The weapons of war had been built, not by the out-System men, but by their hosts. The plans had not proven too difficult to follow....

The new knowledge was not hoarded, was not held under jealous guard by those who had given it, but by those to whom it had been given. One man from another; one group of men from another. States and nations from each other.

Until there was no trust left on all the planet.

There were the wars, then.

And when they were over, the new masters had established their first beachhead in the new System.

"But, it was only a beachhead, and had been only intended as such—" The pictures broke off; the unspoken words resumed. "Your planet was the ultimate target, but at first, your civilization was not adequately advanced to fall prey to their technique. Their weapon is knowledge, but the potentialities of that knowledge must be understood by a people before it can be effectively used to destroy them.

"The rest must be self-evident. After we destroyed ourselves, they sank their infectious, hollow roots into our planet.