B524 <=> B526 [BTG XXXI Last sojourn to Earth, p. 525]

“You must know that after my fifth visit to the surface of that planet of yours, I continued likewise, as before, to observe from time to time the existence of those three-brained beings who please you.

“I observed them particularly attentively at those periods when there proceeded among them their chief particularity, namely, their processes of ‘reciprocal destruction.’

“And I observed so attentively at these periods because I wished to make unquestionably clear to myself the causes of the periodic manifestations of such an exceptionally terrible need of their strange psyche – strange to the point of the phenomenal.

“When I happened to be a little freer I would at times follow for almost a whole Martian day or night every kind of their manifestations during these processes.

“Well, thanks to these special observations of mine, both from the planet Mars and during my former personal sojourns there among them, I had a more or less definite understanding concerning all the ways and means used by them for a more effective destruction of each other’s existence.

“Well, my boy, once while watching as usual this process of theirs from the planet Mars through my big Teskooano I suddenly noticed that which served as the initial cause impelling me to undertake my sixth descent; namely, I saw this time that, without moving from their place, they did with a certain thing something which resulted in a tiny puff of smoke, whereupon a being from the opposite side immediately fell down either totally destroyed or with one or other part of his planetary body mutilated or destroyed forever.

“Such a means of reciprocal destruction I had never seen before; and there had not yet been crystallized in my presence any data for a confrontative logical explanation of the possibility on their part of using such a means for destroying the existence of other beings similar to themselves.