Secretary-General Hammad Ali Saleh sat down in his chair at the head of the semicircular table and reached thankfully for the water glass at his elbow. He hadn't been this nervous in thirty-five years, not since the Iran-Iraq border wars of the eighties. Then, he'd been a young Yemeni volunteer recognizing on an emotional level that the shells dropping out of the sky could kill him very dead.

Now, his position was uncomfortably similar. No one knew why the alien wanted to talk to mankind's leaders, but the Celeritas's experience suggested the answer might not be a pleasant one. Certainly the superpowers thought so; all three had voted in favor of letting the UN take the hot seat. Point man, stalking horse … the expendable ones. Sipping his ice water carefully, Saleh consciously relaxed his jaw and waited.

"The Ctencri greet you in response," the voice came abruptly. "It is ever an honor to welcome a new people into space. Your race has advanced greatly in the eight hundred years since you were last studied. It is hoped that we may find a solid base for trade and mutual profit."

Something in Saleh's chest seemed to loosen up slightly. Trade and profit were business, not political, terms. Was this, then, merely a trading expedition? Saleh couldn't decide whether he would feel relieved or annoyed if the Ctencri government had indeed left their first contact with Earth to the aliens' version of AT&T.

Whoever it was out there, though, he had one very important point to clear up right away. "We would certainly be interested in discussing trade possibilities,"

Saleh said. "However, we have several questions we would like to ask first.

Foremost among them is why your ships fired on one of our unarmed probes."

There was a short pause. "The question is meaningless. The defense units of Hreshtra-cten did not use force. Your lander was allowed to leave peaceably."