Trap in the alley

One point had been ignored by the USU from the peace- and trade-seeking Aluiris. After living with humanity for over twenty years, as a part of it and absorbing traits into their malleability, the aluir slowly began to become corrupted. They had already sent dozens of huge loads of plastic to their planet in autopiloted subspace export-import cargo ships, but the demand was still insatiable.

They began to wonder why trade after all - why not act as humanity itself seems to be doing all the time. Why not just take it? Why not conquer, plunder, steal, subjugate, enslave when they had such a powerful technological superiority over this barbaric community. Why not act like them? Why not subjugate the whole of Tellus into one large, plastic-producing complex? And the baseness of the darkest sides of humanity began to erode the foundation of their morality, which shines from such a pure lust for profit.

However, the problem was that, as a non-violent people, despite their technical superiority, they did not have the necessary weapons for the job. Their most powerful one was a thrust field, which they could use when sailing in normal space to push the stone blocks that were sailing there out of their way. The basic honesty of the Aluirs prevented them from even thinking of presenting anything else.

Bhattachaya noticed the subtle nuances of the beginning of change. He felt the color frequencies change a little, and then more, and more. Finally, while in Helsingham to meet his very good friend, his legendary fellow founding member of the 15, the leader of HeSU known only as Puku, Bhattachaya brought it up.

They knew each other very well. If one was genuinely worried about something, the other had no other choice either. Suit didn't ask for evidence, no arguments.

Suit and Bhattachaya considered how to proceed in the matter. If it were something else—surprising problems on the planet of Aluiri's, technical difficulties, personal frictions, who knows so much about them—there would be no point in jeopardizing such a fruitful relationship with paranoia.

But if it really were the vibrations that Bhattachaya sensed, the risk would be far too great to take.

So they set a trap. HeSU's counter-espionage should professionally "slip" the "top secret" to the knowledge of only the Aluiris. The fairytale they made up was like this:

"The troubleshooting division of HeSU's Product and Development Department would have just made a very worrying discovery. By connecting the technical device he made to SafirSheriff, it could be converted to send rays that would affect ordinary human minds instead of metants.

Humans could be subjugated to obey the entity that manages the Safirsheriff in all the cities where it would operate. Every decision maker including governments, parliaments and heads of state, agency, person, factory and any institution would obey SafirSheriff's ruler. USU would immediately send a special department to pick up the invention for analysis in the morning."

SafirSheriff could not actually work like this. The troubleshooting division of HeSU's Product and Development Department was not actually located at its fake address, with a toy import company on the outskirts of Helsingham in the background. But if the Aluiris appeared there, they should be captured and then asked in the interrogations kindly why they were hanging around the remote location of the device that enables the control of humanity right then.

Suit thought for a moment, and decided that the reliable superprotectors 3XPower, Kovakwon and Jellier were best suited for the task. They would be the best in their collective abilities to capture the Aluiris. They would have to wait in the alley to see if the action or the dawn would come first.