The captain was momentarily silent, groping for an adequate reply. Behind him somebody made a choked noise, the only sound in the stunned hush, and the ship jarred slightly as a thunderbolt slammed vengefully into its field.
"Suppose we settle this argument about humanity," said Knof Llud woodenly. He named a vision frequency.
"Very well." The tone was like a shrug. The voice went on in its language that was quite intelligible, but alien-sounding with the changes that nine hundred years had wrought. "Perhaps, if you realize your position, you will follow the intelligent example of the Quest I's commander."
Knof Llud stiffened. The Quest I, launched toward Arcturus and the star cloud called Berenice's Hair, had been after the Quest III the most hopeful of the expeditions—and its captain had been a good friend of Llud's, nine hundred years ago.... He growled, "What happened to him?"
"He fought off our interceptors, which are around you now, for some time," said the voice lightly. "When he saw that it was hopeless, he preferred suicide to defeat, and took his ship into the Sun." A short pause. "The vision connection is ready."
Knof Llud switched on the screen at the named wavelength, and a picture formed there. The face and figure that appeared were ugly, but undeniably a man's. His features and his light-brown skin showed the same racial characteristics possessed by those aboard the Quest III, but he had an elusive look of deformity. Most obviously, his head seemed too big for his body, and his eyes in turn too big for his head.
He grinned nastily at Knof Llud. "Have you any other last wishes?"
"Yes," said Llud with icy control. "You haven't answered one question. Why do you want to kill us? You can see we're as human as you are."
The big-headed man eyed him with a speculative look in his great eyes, behind which the captain glimpsed the flickering raw fire of a poisonous hatred.
"It is enough for you to know that you must die."