"They have been suspicious, impossible to establish communication with and murderously destructive. They have been careless of their own safety: sly, stupid, cautious, clever, bold and highly intelligent. They are inquisitive and impatient of getting answers to questions. "In short, they are startlingly like humans. Their reactions have been so much like yours--granted the difference that it was they who discovered you instead of you who discovered them--that their reactions are highly predictable. If they think it is to their own advantage and if they can manage to do it, they will utterly destroy your civilization ... which, after a couple of generations, will probably leave you no worse off than you are now." "Cut out the heavy philosophy," said Bristol, "and give me a few facts to back up your sweeping statements." "Take the incident of first contact," Buster responded. "With very little evidence of thought or of careful preparation, they tried to land on the outermost inhabited planet of Rigel. Their behavior certainly did not appear to be that of an invader, yet humans immediately tried to shoot them out of the sky." "That wasn't deliberate," protested Bristol. "The place they tried to land on is a heavy planet in a region of high meteor flux. We used a gadget providing for automatic destruction of the larger meteors in order to make the planet safe enough to occupy. That, incidentally, is why the invading ship wasn't destroyed. The missile, set up as a meteor interceptor only, was unable to correct for the radical course changes of the enemy spaceships, and therefore missed completely. And you will remember what the invader did. He immediately destroyed the Interceptor Launching Station." "Which, being automatically operated, resulted in no harm to anyone," commented Buster calmly. Bristol stalked back toward the base of the calculator, and poked his nose practically into a vision receptor. "It was no thanks to the invading ships that nobody was killed," he said hotly. "And when they came back three days later they killed a _lot_ of people. They occupied the planet and we haven't been able to dislodge them since." * * * * *