"That's one way of putting it," Gordon sneered. "But the truth is that
you know damned well I'll blow both of your ships out of space if you so
much as ..."

"Oh, chip-chop the jaw-flapping, Gordon!" Hilton snapped. Then, as the
admiral began to bellow orders into his microphone, he went on: "You
want it the hard way, eh? Watch what happens, all of you!"

* * * * *

The _UC-1_ shot vertically into the air. Through its shallow dense layer
and into and through the stratosphere. Earth's fleet, already on full
alert and poised to strike, rushed to the attack. But the carrier had
reached the _Orion_ and both Ardvorian ships had been waiting,
motionless, for a good half minute before the Terran warships arrived
and began to blast with everything they had.

"Flashlights and firecrackers," Sawtelle said, calmly. "You aren't even
warming up our screens. As soon as you quit making a damned fool of
yourself by wasting energy that way, we'll set the _UC-1_ back down
where she was and get on with our business here."

"You will order a cease-fire at once, Admiral," the chairman said, "or
the rest of us will, as of now, remove you from the Board." Gordon
gritted his teeth in rage, but gave the order.

"If he hasn't had enough yet to convince him," Hilton suggested, "he
might send up a drone. We don't want to kill anybody, you know. One with
the heaviest screening he's got--just to see what happens to it."

"He's had enough. The rest of us have had more than enough. That
exhibition was not only uncalled-for and disgusting--it was outrageous!"

The meeting settled down, then, from argument to constructive
discussion, and many topics were gone over. Certain matters were,
however, so self-evident that they were not even mentioned.

Thus, it was a self-evident fact that no Terran could ever visit Ardvor;
for the instrument-readings agreed with the report's statements as to
the violence of the Ardvorian environment, and no Terran could possibly
walk around in two tons of lead. Conversely, it was self-apparent to the
Terrans that no Ardan could ever visit Earth without being recognized
instantly for what he was. Wearing such armor made its necessity starkly
plain. No one from the _Perseus_ could say that any Ardan, after having
lived on the furiously radiant surface of Ardvor, would not be as
furiously radioactive as the laboratory's calibrated instruments had
shown Hilton and Sawtelle actually to