
detachedly; you would not know until you were hit. He had his pistol out and was firing too, rather wildly,
but towards where the enemy attack would come from.
‘Here they come! Make for the ship, Tyne!’ Allan bellowed.
As the new searchlight swamped them, Tyne caught a glimpse of moving forms. The Rosks had been
lying in wait for them. Then a hammer blow struck his shoulder, sending illuminated pain like a crazy neon
system all over his body. Gasping, he heard his suit creak with all the abandon of a falling tree. He was
going over . . . and as he went, he had a jigsaw puzzle, upside-down, glimpse of approaching Rosks.
When the Rosks had arrived in the solar system four and a half years before, one unambitious day in
March, 2189, an epoch ended, though comparatively few people realised it at the time, Man’s time of
isolation was over. No longer could he regard himself as the only sentient being in the universe. On his
doorstep stood a race superior to him scientifically if not morally.
The shock of the Roskian arrival was felt most severely in those countries which for several centuries
had been accustomed to regarding themselves as the world’s rulers, or the arbiters of its conduct. They
were now in the position of a school bully, who, looking carefully over his shoulder, finds the headmaster
standing over him.
The Rosks came in one mighty ship, and a quarter of the world’s population quaked in fear; another
quarter cheered with excitement; the wiser half reserved judgement. Some of them, four and a half years
later, were still reserving judgement. The Rosks were no easier to sum up than Earthmen.
Superficially, a Rosk resembled a man. Not a white man but, say, a Malayan. Their appearance varied
from one to another, but most of them had light brown skins, no/bridge to their noses, dark eyes. The
body temperature was 105.1 degrees, a sign of the hotter planet from which they came.
When the Rosks arrived, Tyne Leslie was the youngest second secretary to an under-secretary to the
Under-Secretary of the British Corps of the United Nations Council. He had witnessed the endless
fluttering in ministerial dovecotes that went on all over the world as the realities of the Rosk-Man situation
became apparent. For the true situation emerged only gradually, while language barriers were being
broken down. And the true situa-tion was both complicated and unpleasant.
Man learnt something of the impasse from a yellow-haired Rosk, Tawdell Co Barr, who was one of the
first Roskian spokes-man on the U.N.C
‘Our mother ship,’ he explained, ‘is an interstellar vessel housing four interplanetary craft and something
more than five thousand of our people, male and female. Most of them are colonists, seeking only a
world to live in. We have come from a world you would call Alpha Centauri II; ours is the first
inter-stellar voyage ever made from that beautiful but overcrowded planet. We came to Sol, our nearest
neighbour in the vastness of space, seeking room to live - only to find that its one habitable planet is
already swarming with men. Although we are happy to meet another sentient race, the depth of our
disappointment otherwise cannot be measured: our journey, our long journey, has been in vain.’
‘It’s a civil speech,’ Tyne commented, when he heard it. And other civil speeches followed, each
revealing at least one awkward fact about the Rosk visit.
To begin with, these facts almost passed unnoticed among the general run of humanity.
After the first wave of shock had passed round Earth, a tide of optimism followed. The real difficulties