Bolt after bolt rammed down from the open ports, scorching the ground, blasting great holes in solid rock formations, leveling hills, raking huge furrows where before there had been only level soil. One of the laser beams--perhaps the fiftieth or sixtieth--took the nose section off the _Photon_, leaving only jagged metal as an undignified crown marring its architectural integrity. Another found its mark too, annihilating one of the helpless ship's hydraulic fins and tearing a gaping hole in its engine section. The _Photon_ tilted precariously, but somehow managed to remain upright. Then the assaulting vessel was gone, swallowed from the sky by the ridge of hills over which it had passed in completing its low-altitude sweep. Minute followed minute in the breathless silence that punctuated the impossible attack. Stewart knew he should be pushing on to the _Photon_ to see if Carol and the others had happened to be in the demolished nose section. But he only stood there, paralyzed. For, as he looked back on the unbelievable action, he realized that the vicious attack had, after all, _come as no surprise to him_! He had expected it all along! _That_ must have been the nameless fear lurking behind a curtain in his mind. And abruptly he knew with a certainty that expectation of this assault had been the basis of his indescribable apprehension. He had _known_ that a ship--_an alien vessel_--would be here waiting for them! And the _Photon's_ crew would be taken all the more off guard because it was incredible, in the first place, that the galaxy might have spawned two intelligent, star-seeking races within the same sector. But, if he had had that knowledge, how could he have _forgotten_ anything so crucially important? VI Stabilizing itself once more in synchronous orbit, the immense Tzarean ship generated internal gravity and meted out isotonic saline solution to a number of tanks in crew's quarters. In the central compartment it was a triumphant, impassioned Chancellor Vrausot who turned his massive hulk on Mittich and hissed-clicked, "There! I told you they had come unarmed! There was absolutely no response to the attack!" Grim-faced, the Assemblyman only stared at him. Vrausot paced, thumping his stout tail against the deck with each stride. It was a gesture that expressed anxiety. "Don't you see what that means, Mittich? They _knew_ we would be out here. They had independently corroborating evidence to that effect. Yet they came unarmed. They _are_ a peaceful, naive, unsuspecting race of sitting _uraphi_!" Very weakly, the Assemblyman reminded, "Our purpose, then, is to make amiable contact and determine--"