"Captain Mackley," said Cressey, "I've heard it said that Earth is the aggressor in this war." "Have you ever seen the London Crater?" asked the Information Officer.
"Pictures, yes, but what I want to know is, who attacked first?"
"It doesn't really matter, does it Cressey? There is a war, and we've got to fight it, no matter how it started."
"Yes sir," said Cressey, "but I wanted to know."
"All right, I'll tell you then. The Outspacers contacted this system roughly six years ago. The first eighteen months they spent on the outer planets. During the second year they came in as far as Mars, and established a base there. Six months later, one of their ships left on an obvious course toward Earth. It was destroyed by a missile launched from Satellite II." Mackley shrugged. "You know the rest. They retaliated. Satellite II was vaporized."
"But Earth fired first?"
"I told you, it doesn't make any difference now. One Outspacer later got through the defense rings, and now there's nothing from London to Cambridge but glass. Whatever the hell they use for weapons, they're effective."
"So we don't know whether or not they were originally hostile."
"No, we don't. It had to be assumed they............