"Suit yourself," the Chancellor grumbled.
The screen hunted out and steadied upon the alien ship.
"It's clean!" Mittich exclaimed. "They're not armed!"
"Nonsense," Vrausot said, coming over to see. "They've got to be. Why else would they come here?"
"The hull is sleek." The Assemblyman pointed with his long snout. "I see no gun-hatch outlines."
The Chancellor produced the Tzarean equivalent of a humorless laugh. "They're aliens, Mittich—with an alien technology. Perhaps we wouldn't even recognize their weapons if we saw them."
"But, as if they were hostile and furtive, would they have exposed themselves helplessly on that plain—like sitting uraphi?"
Vrausot's eyes intensified with resolution. "We're going to strike them—now! We're not going to wait and take the chance of having them slip from our grasp."
Appalled, the Assemblyman drew back. "But that's just what we're not supposed to do! We might touch off a war that will annihilate either or both of two cultures!"
"If we don't strike now it'll be our culture that will be annihilated. I wouldn't want that, Mittich. Just think of the glory and honor and tradition of conquest that would be lost forever. What we do here is being watched, indeed, by our ancestors who gave their lives in the final battle for total consolidation of the Tzarean Shoal!"