ok both our welcome and us for everything they could before
we pulled the rug out from under them. The second time we boxed them off
and they broke out after converting the isolation screen into an
offensive weapon. The third time we tried to avoid them and they ran
wild exploiting less ambitious races. The fourth time we missed the boat
and they were chewing at our back door before we knew about them;
containing them was almost a nova job. The fifth time we went in and
tried to understand them, they traded us two for one. Two things they
didn't want for one they did," Huvane's lips curled, "and I'm not sure
that they didn't trade us the other way around; two they needed for one
they declared useless. Sixth? that was the last time and they just came
out shooting as if the whole galaxy automatically objected. This time?
Who knows?" Huvane sat down again and put his hands between his knees.

"They don't operate like _people_. Sensible folk settle their own
problems, then look for more. Terra? One half of the globe is against
the other half of the globe. Fighting one another tooth and nail, they
still find time to invent and cross space to other planets and continue
their fight on unknown territory."

"Maybe we'd better just admit that we don't know the solution. Then we
can clobber Terra back to the swamp, juggle the place into another ice
age, put the details down in History, and hope that our remote progeny
will be smarter than we."

"Like maybe we're smarter than our remote ancestors?" jeered Huvane.

"Got a better idea?"

"Maybe. Has anybody really taken a couple of them and _analyzed_ them?"

"It's inhumane."

"I agree, but--?"

"Get me a healthy, well-balanced specimen of somewhat
better-than-average education and training. Can do?"

"Can do. But how are you going to keep him?"

"I don't intend to study him like I'd study a bug under a microscope.
This one won't get away. Make it in fourteen versaids, Huvane."

"Make it in ten plus or minus a radite or two. So long!"

* * * * *

The beast at Cape Canaveral stood three hundred and fifteen feet tall
dwarfing her creators into microscopic proportions. Swarming up and down
the gantry, bug-sized humans crawled in and out of check ports with
instrument checks, hauling hoses, cables, lines. Some thousand feet
away, a puff-bomb of red smoke billowed out and a habit-flattened voice
announced: "At the mark, X Minus Fifteen Minutes