"And what do you intend to do about it?"
"I intend to carry on. Now forget about the fact that a personal grudge of mine has been taken out of my hands and let's get on to working out some means of fighting back. Lane is gone. I'm trying not to gloat. But you're not helping. So stop it."
Toralen Ki shook his head in a worried manner. "One is gone."
"A substitute?"
"I fear that any substitute may not be as good."
"Nonsense, Toralen. Were there a better man than either, we'd have selected him; if either had not existed, a lesser man would have sufficed."
"The right kind is so very few," complained Toralen Ki.
"We can find one. We will have to return to their planet to do so, and it will be harder for us—but it can be done. No good general has only one plan of battle."
"But so much depends—Ah well, despair is the product of the inferior intellect. We will, we must carry on."