"Now as to our behavior toward the natives--previous experience with mammalian life-types shows that they are susceptible to panic and fear when confronted with something totally strange, so we will use tactics which basically are very simple. First, we will land near a native settlement. When we march into the area, our alien appearance will stun the natives. Our detachment of all-range telepathic sensitives will notify us when the state of shock has set in, then our attack support will open up with full-scale mental assault, and keep the creatures paralyzed while we seize the area before a defense can be organized. Then the Grand Fleet will proceed here at top speed." "Remember that in this, as in all operations where the powers of the collective mind are used, we must first trigger the enemy's reaction by physical means, therefore nothing can be done until we _know_ that they are in the needed state of shock. Now are there any questions?" How strange actually, mused the commander as he returned to his cubicle, that a race like his own, so gifted at pure mental contact with other life-forms, should still use signals and colorations to communicate among themselves. The chafed spot on his left antenna was paining again after the exercise of the briefing. The report had said that these mammalians were believed to converse through some kind of atmospheric vibrations.... Odd too, that mental warfare, refined and developed though it was, could still only be used against minds agitated by a specific physical stimulus. And that physical stimulus had to be provided by the invaders appearing on the scene, and if necessary performing the Dra, a series of dances and contortions so repulsive to most life-forms that all thinking would fade into panic. Having once thwirmed himself at a performance of the Dra, he hoped it wouldn't be necessary ... his musings were interrupted as the ship's lights flickered to orange, signalling hands to stations for planetfall. Leaving the con of the ship to his second-in-command, he shut himself in his cubicle and made preparations to be miserably sick, as he always was during deceleration. Stroking the chafed spot on his antenna with the smooth edge of his left forearm's prehensile claw, Zurg raised his medicine kit in his secondary tentacles and snapped off the heavy lead seal with his jagged incisor mandibles. I wonder, he speculated, why alien races always find us so frightening.... * * * * *