There was a strange calm in his mind, now. He understood the words and accepted them as matter-of-factly as they were given. Even now they were manipulating him like some intangible puppet, yet he was convinced it was not a malevolent manipulation. 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."