"Kill them! Kill them!" one of the Assemblymen clicked out as he sprang up on his tail.
The Great Hall resounded with click-hisses of approval and disapproval—an equal measure of each, it seemed to Stewart.
He watched Mittich smile—at least, it passed for a smile in the Tzarean Shoal—tolerantly at the excited Assemblyman.
"Killing our prisoners," he chided, "will not alter the fact that alien expansion is under way in the direction of our Shoal."
Chancellor Vrausot lumbered down the central aisle, defying the independence of the legislature as he had during all sessions which Stewart and Harlston had attended as Exhibits A and B of the "Alien threat" issue.
Whacking his tail against the floor for attention, he stood before the table and hissed vehemently, "We must arm to the limit of our potential. We must dispose of these prisoners. We must attack their centers of civilization before they attack ours!"
Another Assemblyman rose imploringly. "But how can we do that? We haven't fought a war in countless millennia! Once we were many and mighty, as they are now. But while they have grown, we have shrunk. Why, our entire Shoal consists of only two civilized worlds. All the others have long been in decay."
"Oh, we could take them by surprise and inflict much damage on their worlds," Hisser of the Assembly Mittich agreed with Chancellor Vrausot. "But they would recover. And we would be annihilated."
"Then what," the Chancellor asked scornfully, "would you propose that we do?"
"Our choices are enumerable: