Capt. Halsey hurriedly downed the rum. "Skippers are picked because
they're tough-minded and authoritarian. In space you need it
occasionally. Fortunately I lived up to specifications. A peaceful sort
like my Lyranian just couldn't take it--fortunately."
"Fortunately?" I asked.
"Sure. What else? Possibly those natives we conditioned would help
our case, possibly not. And in the meantime the Lyranians would suck
Alex dry. And with the _Two Two Four_ gone it'd be maybe a couple of
hundred years before we ran into them again, and by then they'd really
be ready--loaded for bear with itchy trigger fingers--and we just might
have a war on our hands. As it is we'll send out a battle fleet to give
some authority to our negotiators so no one will get hurt. They just
shouldn't have picked Alex as typical of us. With his attitude and our
weapons, they naturally got a lot of wrong ideas."
"Wrong?" I prompted the skipper.
Halsey chuckled. "Yes, that's what I said--wrong ideas," he said in
that remote second voice. "Just because you've forgotten self-defense
doesn't mean that other peaceful civilizations don't remember it."