She shook her head. "I want to finish this. Go on, don't keep Dad waiting."
Norden found most of the seats filled, but Miles saw him and waved him over. There was a round of introductions to names that were famous in their fields—famous enough for even Norden to recognize, though he'd stuck pretty closely to his own specialty.
"How's it shaping up?" Miles wanted to know.
"We should have the notes decoded tonight," Norden told him. "After that, it's a matter of how useful they'll be."
Miles grunted unhappily. "They'd better offer a more promising lead than the others we've had. And soon! At this rate, in two more weeks at most, the Aliens will be taking over the Moon—and if that happens, we may as well stay here waiting for them."
He turned to the head psychologist, while Norden was still hunting for the meaning of the implied threat he thought he could reed into the words. "Jim, what about Enfield?"
"No dice," the psychologist answered. "He's obsessed with xenophobia—he hates the Aliens for breakfast, lunch and between meals. I can't treat him here. Of course, after what happened to his wife...."
Miles put his fork down and faced the group, but his eyes were on Norden. His words had the ring of an often-delivered but still vital lecture. "Damn it, we can't afford hatred. Maybe the mobs need it to keep them going. But we have serious things to do that take sound judgment. Why not hate disease germs or any other natural enemy?"
His voice hardened. "They don't kill for the pure love of evil. They're intelligent beings, doing what they believe has to be done. I think they're wrong, and I can't understand them—though I wish I could. I consider poisoning bedbugs a wise move, though no intelligent bedbug would agree with me. This expedition of theirs would be a major job for any trace, and they're going at it just as we would—if we had to exterminate the boll weevil.
"Emotions haven't a thing to do with it. We're in a battle for raw survival, and we haven't the time to indulge our animal emotions. It's a scientific problem that has to be solved for our lives—like a plague."