“Because you are remarkable creatures. Electronic civilizations on the verge of becoming relativistic ones—what could be more fantastic? Or more rare? And you’re all gone now, or soon will be. All except you two. We really held out no hope of finding survivors, traveling so conveniently in an unarmed vessel that could be collected and studied.”

A picture was projected on the tank wall—translated, Jonathan guessed, into colors from sonic or radar imagery—or whatever means the aliens relied on for “seeing.” The greens and reds were in all the wrong places; but there seemed to be far more detail than was necessary to convey the scene to human eyes, the kind of detail a hawk might be able to discern on the head of a mouse from ninety meters above. Silver crabs were swarming over the hull of Alvin, inspecting it, climbing in and out of the conning tower and removing pieces from inside.

“Beautiful piece of technology,” said the enemy. “Virtually a hand-made machine. A pity that we can’t take it with us. Too much mass.”

“What will you do with it,” Hollis asked.

“What would be easier for you? That we let it burn up in your atmosphere, or that we leave it in orbit? It could still be whirling ‘round and ‘round your planet, perfectly intact, millions of years from now.”

Hollis thought about that for a moment. Throughout Alvin’s long existence, the ship had evolved into one of the strangest assemblages of tanks, motors, and computers that ever belonged to humankind. What the robotic doves alone would contain, if they abandoned the submarine in space, might qualify as an anthology of her civilization, Hollis told herself. If a hundred million years hence some other civilization did find Alvin whirling around a world that had cooled and become green again, the ship would tell much about its builders’ daring and genius, and even their fallibility. Alvin would still be here, telling her people’s story long after the mounds that had once been the pyramids ceased to be even a memory. But… but…

“But you killed everyone,” she said suddenly. “You killed everything. You came here with that level of hatred in you. Why should you care what is easier for us?”

“Do not attribute to malice what can be explained by logic.”

“Or evil.”

“No,” said the enemy. “Not your idea of evil. All your misfortunes arise from nothing more than a probability curve. Even if you were almost nothing to us, nothing more than an extremely low-probability threat, as long as we had the power to reduce that threat to zero, it was perfectly logical for us to do so.”

“Threat?” Hollis said. “We were a threat to no one! Every one of our ships went out there in peace.” Her voice was full of bitterness, but it felt good to get it out.

“Probably the strongest reason for your annihilation was the manner in which you hoped to seek out new life,” said the enemy. He touched something on his console and the room was filled with music. “April 5, 1985, by your calendar. ‘We are the world/ you boasted to the Galaxy—your whole planet, all at once. To this day it remains the loudest burst of coherent radio waves we have ever received. Our equipment locked on the source as soon as the signal swept through our system. That’s when we learned about you and began watching.”