It was all such a waste, Cox thought bitterly. The thing to do was to make friends with the aliens, not to assume automatically they were dangerous.

Something, at least, was being done along those lines. A delegation came out of Murphy Hall and slowly walked behind a white flag from the administration building toward the starship. At the head of the delegation was the mayor of Los Angeles: the President and governor were busy elsewhere. Billy Cox would have given anything to be part of the delegation instead of sprawled here on his belly in the grass. If only the aliens had waited until he was fifty or so, had given him a chance to get established—

Sergeant Amoros nudged him with an elbow. “Look there, man. Something’s happening—”

Amoros was right. Several hatchways which had been shut were swinging open, allowing Earth’s air to mingle with the ship’s.

The westerly breeze picked up. Cox’s nose twitched. He could not name all the exotic odors wafting his way, but he recognized sewage and garbage when he smelled them. “God, what a stink!” he said.

“By the gods, what a stink!” Togram exclaimed. When the outer airlock doors went down, he had expected real fresh air to replace the stale, overused gases inside the Indomitable. This stuff smelled like smoky peat fires, or lamps whose wicks hadn’t quite been extinguished. And it stung! He felt the nictitating membranes flick across his eyes to protect them.

“Deploy!” he ordered, leading his company forward. This was the tricky part. If the locals had nerve enough, they could hit the Roxolani just as the latter were corning out of their ship, and cause all sorts of trouble. Most races without hyperdrive, though, were too overawed by the arrival of travelers from the stars to try anything like that. And if they didn’t do it fast, it would be too late.