"Then the explosion of the space-cruiser hull...?" "Was faked." "You _tricked_ me!" "I did. But you believed me until I told you." Luverduk was starting to hop up and down, although his feet never quite left the deck. "I will admit that, but only because it's true!" "It's true, all right. In addition to being an Intelligence and weapons expert, I am likewise rather clever in the field of psychology. Your foreknowledge of my expertness with weapon design had you half-convinced I could do something fantastic before you even saw me apparently do it. And when you saw it in what looked like actuality, it was all you needed." "But we are surrendering anyhow! You _are_ a mad fellow--" "Let us not, Luverduk, confuse the term 'truce' with 'surrender.' What I told Hoskins and what I am actually doing are horses, one might say, of variable hues...." "You see a way out of this, Kram?" "Prepare to man the decelerators at 3.8G on my signal." As the roar of the forward jets cut in and Kram's vision grew momentarily blurred, the suspicion grew in his mind that Luverduk was mumbling something about northbound horses.... * * * * * The military headquarters of Xenthl, Commander-In-Chief of the Sirian Expeditionary Forces and Grand Protector of the Universe were, as Kram would have put it, somewhat stupendous. Simplicity was the keynote of its otherworldly architecture; the huge hemisphere of eerily glimmering alloy was first viewed by Luverduk with anything but a narrow-eyed, analytical gaze. And its interior, although not resplendent in the sense of the courts of ancient kings, was a breath-stopping spectacle of geometry as could only have been conceived by minds of Other Space. The involutions of its eye-defying curves were as gracefully simple as they were dimensionally complex; the very straightness of the corridor down which the procession of heavily armed guards and the men from earth proceeded was a masterpiece of structural design in itself. Xenthl's sanctum sanctorum was an even greater achievement in the architecturally impossible. Kram made a mental note to make a requisition for a replastering job in his own office immediately upon his return to Earth. Luverduk was impressed, but more with Xenthl's bearded, rotund, pink-skinned majesty than with his surroundings. "Without the beaver, he'd look just like me, Kram!" "So he would, Major!" The seated Xenthl signalled his guards to halt, and the envoys of truce to step forward. His oversized cranium, typical of his race, seemed to nod gently from its own weight. "You come," he mouthed the Terrestrian language awkwardly, "as couriers of surrender?"