I was then more surprised and appalled at my lifelong naivety. It had never occurred to me that there might be other races on the planets we seeded for food. That they deserved an equal chance of life as the Agri race was an alien concept that I still cannot to this day come to terms with. What I received from the Major was the sense of a life lived desperately at its beginning then in the constant pain and loss of eternal combat. But underlying his strong sense of duty, I sensed an honourable creature that would not kill us unnecessarily but was still motivated by a terrible purpose, the total destruction of the Agri ability to expand into space! Surely he must have realized that if we were confined to one planet trillions of us would perish!
The cabin rumbled as the alien creatures acti
