“The Earthmen,” said the Martian deliberately, “must die.”
“The Earthmen,” Lathrop declared, “don’t intend to die.”
Then, for the first time, the Martian faced him, stared at him with fish-bleak eyes. And Lathrop, staring back, felt slow, cold anger creep upon him. Anger at the arrogance, the insolence, the scarcely veiled belief that the Earth race was inferior, that some of its members must die because a Martian said they must. Arrogance that made the Martians believe they could conduct a crusade to bend the human race to the Martian way of thinking, use human beings to sell the race the dogma that had sent the Martians fleeing before a threat from the outer stars.
“I killed one of you before,” snapped Lathrop, “with my bare hands.”
It wasn’t what he would have liked to have said. It was even a childish thing to say.
Through his mind ran bits of history, snatched from the Earthian past — before space travel. Bits that told of the way inferior races had been propagandized and browbeaten into trends of thought by men who wouldn’t wipe their feet on them even while they sought to dictate their ways of life. And here it was again!
He would have liked to have told the Martian that, but it would have taken too long, maybe the Martian wouldn’t even understand.
“Where’s the robot?” asked the Martian.
“Yeah, where’s Buster?” yelped Alf. “I got a score to settle with that rattletrap. That’s why I came here. I swore I’d bust him down into a tinker toy and so help me—”
“Keep quiet, Alf,” said Carter. “Buster is a toy now. One that scoots along the floor.”