"Is that all?" demanded Llud.
"Isn't it enough?" said Zost Relyul blankly. "Well—we tried photography by invisible light, of course. The infra-red shows nothing and likewise the ultraviolet up to the point where the atmosphere is opaque to it."
The captain sighed wearily. "Good work," he said. "Keep it up; perhaps you can answer some of these riddles before—"
"We know who you are," interrupted a harshly crackling voice with a strange accent, "and pleading will do you no good."
Knof Llud whirled to the radio apparatus, his weariness dropping from him once more. He snapped, "But who are you?" and the words blended absurdly with the same words in his own voice on the still repeating tape.
He snapped off the record; as he did so the speaker, still crackling with space static, said, "It may interest you to know that you are the last. The two other interstellar expeditions that went out have already returned and been destroyed, as you will soon be—the sooner, if you continue toward Earth."
Knof Llud's mind was clicking again. The voice—which must be coming from Earth, relayed by one of the midget ships—was not very smart; it had already involuntarily told him a couple of things—that it was not as sure of itself as it sounded he deduced from the fact it had deigned to speak at all, and from its last remark he gathered that the Quest III's ponderous and unswerving progress toward Earth had somehow frightened it. So it was trying to frighten them.
He shoved those facts back for future use. Just now he had to know something, so vitally that he asked it as a bald question, "Are you human?"
The voice chuckled sourly. "We are human," it answered, "but you are not."