capt. halsey hurriedly downed the rum. "skippers are picked because they're tough-minded and authoritarian. in space you need it occasionally. fortunately i lived up to specifications. a peaceful sort like my lyranian just couldn't take it—fortunately."

"fortunately?" i asked.

"sure. what else? possibly those natives we conditioned would help our case, possibly not. and in the meantime the lyranians would suck alex dry. and with the two two four gone it'd be maybe a couple of hundred years before we ran into them again, and by then they'd really be ready—loaded for bear with itchy trigger fingers—and we just might have a war on our hands. as it is we'll send out a battle fleet to give some authority to our negotiators so no one will get hurt. they just shouldn't have picked alex as typical of us. with his attitude and our weapons, they naturally got a lot of wrong ideas."

"wrong?" i prompted the skipper.

halsey chuckled. "yes, that's what i said—wrong ideas," he said in that remote second voice. "just because you've forgotten self-defense doesn't mean that other peaceful civilizations don't remember it."