If they knew the Earthmen were protected by stat-fields, and that a dozen gun-blisters were trained on them, they gave no indication. _We don't want your help._ There was a tone of anger, a driving odor of fear, in the feel of the thoughts. The Earthmen felt their teeth jump as the thoughts materialized. Shreve realized suddenly that the toothaches must be a by-product of the psi power. Shreve turned to Teller. The psych officer was staring back at him, his eyes wide, his hands still clutching his jaw. They both recognized something they had missed when the telepathy first became known to them. It was not an entering of the mind; they could not reach into the deepest recesses of the Diamoraii's minds and get whole pictures. It was like a mental radio transmission. They could send and receive, with inflection and depth, but they had to do it in darkness. Teller said nothing, but he stepped closer to the aliens. Shreve could tell he was thinking at them, but _what_ he was thinking was impossible to guess. If the aliens understood, they gave no indication. The transmission did not work between the Earthmen, obviously. When Teller had fallen back, Shreve asked, "What did you say?" "I told them we were here because volcanic eruptions were going to rip up their planet within five months. I told them the quakes and volcanos would kill off ninety-five percent of their people. I told them we could help them to--" The aliens rose slowly, and one stepped forward. He looked down at the two Earthmen. _Hear this you are not the first strangers to come here once before strange men came to us from the sky they called themselves the Kyben and they told us they wanted to trade but they did not trade they ate away our land and burned our jungle and took our women and killed our young warriors._ It came as a blast of pure thought. All at once, as though spurted out whole from the mind. The inflection was there--the meaning--the depth of bitterness. Shreve felt his mouth dry out at the calibre of agony in the thoughts. Teller shrugged his shoulders as though he wanted no more part in the matter, and retreated a few steps, massaging his throbbing jaws. The alien stream ceased, and the Diamorai drew back. He seemed to rise up on his toes, as though he wanted to strike the Earthman, but was restraining himself through the movement. * * * * * Shreve felt a desperation mounting in him. He _had_ to save these people, _had_ to make them realize their danger. "But you can read our minds--you can _see_ we're telling the truth!" he argued. He found his stomach muscles had tightened, hands had clenched. The alien thought reverberated in his head: _What makes you think you cannot lie with telepathy?_ Then the thoughts flowed again. This time cold, dispassionate, merely information.