"Could you be wrong about this?"
"I doubt it. That is the reason I am here."
"Please explain."
"Are there any beers left?"
"Two, I think."
"Please."
Martin rose and fetched them.
"Damn! The tab broke off this one," he said.
"Place it upon the table and hold it firmly."
"All right."
Tlingel's horn dipped forward quickly, piercing the can's top.
"... Useful for all sorts of things," Tlingel observed,withdrawing it.
"The other reason you're here... ." Martin prompted.
"It is just that I am special. I can do things that the otherscannot."
"Such as?"
"Find your weak spot and influence events to exploit it, to—hastenmatters. To turn the possibility into a probability, and then—"
"_You_ are going to destroy us? Personally?"
"That is the wrong way to look at it. It is more like a game ofchess. It is as much a matter of exploiting your opponent'sweaknesses as of exercising your own strengths. If you had notalready laid the groundwork I would be powerless. I can onlyinfluence that which already exists."
"So what will it be? World War III? An ecological disaster? Amutated disease?"
"I do not really know yet, so I wish you wouldn't ask me in thatfashion. I repeat that at the moment I am only observing. I am onlyan agent—"
"It doesn't sound that way to me."
Tlingel was silent. Martin began gathering up the chessmen.
"Aren't you going to set up the board again?"
"To amuse my destroyer a little more? No thanks."
"That's hardly the way to look at it—"
"Besides, those are the last beers."
"Oh." Tlingel stared wistfully at the vanishing pieces, thenremarked, "I would be willing to play you again without additional