“I don’t know a goddamn thing. And c’mon, Steve! You’re sandbagging like a son of a bitch.”

“Not me. I’m a reliable academic type who’s thought some about extraterrestrial life. That’s why I’m here. But you’re the one who’s done all the wondering and played things out in his head. I wouldn’t have come up with half the scenarios you gave Dale.”

“Sure you would. Only reason I spun them out in a hurry was, I was stealing from half the things I’ve read. That doesn’t exactly qualify me to meet the first aliens, if any aliens are in there to meet.”

“Nobody knows what qualifies someone to do that. A habit of thinking about it can’t hurt.”

He made a certain amount of sense, even if Jerry didn’t want to admit it. To keep from admitting it, he said, “One thing I’m pretty sure of—if Humpty Dumpty does hatch little green men, the politicians’ll grab ’em so fast it’ll make your head spin. I’ve got a hundred bucks that says Henry Kissinger starts picking their pockets by this time next Wednesday.”

“No bet,” Steve said.

In spite of nerves that made his stomach knot, Jerry did go see Dale Neuwirth. He worked himself up to knock on the mission director’s door, then found he didn’t have to: it was open. Warily, he stuck his head inside. Dale was scribbling notes at his desk. When he looked up, Jerry said, “If you’re real busy now, I can come back.”

“Don’t come back. Come in,” Neuwirth said. “Shut the door behind you and grab a chair. I see so little of you, I worry. You keep to yourself even more than the guys in the Control container.”

“I do?” Jerry said in surprise; he hadn’t even noticed. But he realized Dale wasn’t wrong. As he sat, he went on, “I was talking with Steve, and I just wanted to let you know I think he’s right—we’d better not get too rough with Humpty Dumpty.”

“We don’t have flamethrowers or artillery. I’m not going to break out one of the rifles and blow the lock off the door—if it has a lock,” Dale said. “We have power saws aboard, too. I won’t use one of them, either.”

“Okay. I’m real glad to hear it.”

“Whatever’s in there, it belongs to a civilization that can do all kinds of things we can’t. Fly here from wherever it started, for instance. And sink that Russian sub from three miles under it. Getting all tough-guy with it doesn’t seem smart.”