"I know." Fiske looked around curiously. The ship was like the other captured jobs he'd seen. Even the two decapitated Eglani on the deck were familiar--and the other enemy dead he passed on the way to the control room were not abnormal. One expected to see them in a captured Eglan ship. It was the living who were strange, tight faced, thick bodied, stiffly erect aliens and their human guards who stood in the cross passageways watching him as he passed. Fiske shivered. He had never in his life seen eyes so hell-haunted as those the Eglani turned on him. The aliens looked like they would shatter at a touch, brittle shells held intact by a force greater than their wills. "Gives you the creeps, doesn't it?" Pedersen asked in a low voice. "It's worse than anything I've ever seen," Fiske replied. "These people are on the edge of collapse. This is chaos!" The feeling of brittle tension increased as they entered the control room in the center of the ship. A short wide Eglan stood beside the master console. He raised his arm in what was obviously a salute, which Fiske punctiliously returned. A muscle in the Eglan's cheek twitched spasmodically. His fingers were clenched, the knuckles white against his greenish skin. "I am Sar Lauton, of the Eglan Directorate, commander of this ship," the alien said in fluent Terran. "And I am Commander Alton Fiske of the Confederation Navy," Fiske replied. "I have transferred my men to this ship since you didn't leave much of mine." "For that I am sorry," the Eglan said. "You fought well and deserved a better end. However, you still have won. It is finished." The Eglan smiled bitterly. "You see, Commander, we never knew that war could be such _horror_. To many of my crew it was too horrible. You undoubtedly saw some of them on your way here." Fiske nodded. "Now about the surrender terms--" he began. "There are no terms," the alien said woodenly. "You have won." His face twitched. "Can't you appreciate what your weapon has done? I am an Eglan. An Eglan never surrenders. Yet I and half my crew have surrendered. Don't you appreciate the implications of that? Can't you realize that the Directorate is doomed--that you have won a victory here that is more complete than any we have won in a thousand years of war?" "But--" "From birth," the Eglan went on, ignoring the abortive interruption, "we of the warrior caste have been trained to believe that there is no glory other than in battle--that the honor of the Directorate and its supremacy is paramount--that the Directorate must expand to bring the blessings of order to the less favored--that the orders of a superior are to be obeyed unquestioningly--that it is only right that we subordinate ourselves to the greater glory of the Eglan race--that our minds and lives are dedicated to this service--that there is no higher honor, no greater glory than to die for the Eglani." He sounded as though he was reciting a litany that had suddenly become no longer believable.