Pushing and shoving their way into an already crowded mess hall, the three late arrivals found themselves confined to the narrow remaining open space next to the rear wall. Up by the service door that led to the main stockroom, Jaler Maroto was waving his arms for quiet. When that didn't work. he put a compact amplifier to his lips and simply shouted everybody down.

"Shut up! If you'll just shut up, I'll tell you what's going on." As the crowd noise subsided he added apologetically. "Or at least, what we know."

"I know!" Alwyn was not afraid to proclaim theories where others were hesitant to venture facts. "Something local's finally showed up to cause trouble. What is it?" he demanded to know. "A herd of predators? A fast-mutating Plague?"

"There's a plague, all right," the team leader declared through the amplifier, "but it's one we brought along with us." Delighted to take advantage of the emotional release, a number of the assembled turned their laughter in the specialist's direction. Unrepentant but temporarily subdued, he tried to meet the ridicule of each and every one of them with a defiant glare of his own.

"A ship has gone into orbit near the Chagos," Maroto informed scientists and support personnel alike. "We don't mow where it's from, what species built it, or what their intentions are. So far nobody on the Chagos, including the people who are supposed to know about such things, has been able to pull a fact out of a big basket of ignorance."

"They're not thranx?" someone in the crowd wondered loudly, referring to the intelligent insectoid race with v/hom humankind had been cautiously developing-relations over the past thirty years.

"We don't know who or what they are," Maroto replied, 'because they're not responding to the Chagos's repeated queries to identify themselves. If they're thranx, they're being mighty close-mouthed about it."

"The bugs may be ugly, but I've never heard of them going mute," Idar murmured softly.

"I know what they are." When no one reacted to his latest assertion of certitude, Alwyn assumed a plaintive tone. "Well? Doesn't anyone want to know what I know?"

"Nobody wants to know what you know, Alwyn, because you never know half of what you claim to know." Unlike his companions Kairuna had the advantage of being able to see over the heads of just about everyone in the crowd.

"Go ahead and mock." Alwyn was confident as ever. "These are the hostile, rampaging, bloodthirsty aliens we've always feared encountering as we extend our sphere of influence."

"I thought the AAnn were supposed to be the hostile iliens," Idar pointed out.

"That's what the thranx claim, but so far we've only the bugs' word for AAnn hostility. No, these are something new.

- New and hostile," he concluded with an assurance that regrettably was not born of proof.