"I happened to be looking at the moon with my girl when they blew it up." His eyes narrowed at the memory. "She started to cry, and was still at it when we got back to her apartment. That's when I went to a bar to get drunk. It's also one reason I'm here. When they take the moon away from lovers, it's the last straw!" "Give 'em hell, kid!" Mike rasped. Joe silenced him with a wave of his hand, and Mike slouched down in his chair looking hurt. "Mr. Conrad," Moskov said, "will you be good enough to give Dr. Waters the latest developments?" "All right. Joe, you know what's happened this past week." Joe nodded. "In case you didn't get the overall picture--their ships," he jerked a thumb at the whine passing back and forth above, "have completely blanketed the world. They have destroyed every means of defense we've used against them. Atomic anti-aircraft, even, hasn't fazed them in the least. "Yesterday they sent for us. The head of their expedition told us who they are, and it accounts, perhaps, for their anthropoidal appearance. They are from Jupiter, so it's not inconceivable after all that similar forms of life should become dominant in the same solar system. "They are easily twice our size--and if ability to learn and speak fluently in a half hour, each of the three languages represented here means anything, they have a proportionate I.Q. "Their leader, Slan, says his title means he is the crown prince of the royal Jovian family. Slan was nothing if not courteous and chivalrous. He told us yesterday he would give us a sporting chance for survival--why, I can't imagine. Apparently this expedition is like a glorified fox hunt to them. "We are to choose a person to represent the world in an intellectual duel with him. If we win, they withdraw completely, never to bother us again. If we lose, then, he said, we're not worth saving and we'll be completely destroyed--hunted individually, which to them is great sport. "To prove they could do it, he had his ship's guns turn on the moon. You saw what happened--disintegrated completely." "Them crumbs!" Mike grated. "We'll murder 'em, Joe!" "Quiet, Mike." Mike grumbled, pulled out a cigarette paper and tobacco and rolled his own. "That's why we've called on you," Conrad said. "Waters," Sir Manly said, "the world rests on your shoulders." "You have every qualification," M. Tourneau put in. "Your brilliant theories in symbolic logic and theoretical mathematics," said Sir Manly. "Chess champion of the world," Moskov added respectfully. "Your contributions to astrophysics," Conrad said. "And don't you guys ferget--he won the decathlon when he was just a high school kid. He'll murder them bums!" Joe smiled. "Don't mind my pugnacious friend."