Often the villains in his stories experience their downfall because of a lack of respect for other alien species or seemingly innocuous bits of their surroundings.

Political Attack for a Song Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign says it was intended to serve just as an innocuous bit of background music.

The "beautiful positive" was in fact an angry red swelling on the girl's arm, indicating that her immune system was able to spot and attack the tiny, innocuous bit of tetanus microbe contained in the patch test.

Lyons has recently seen Keith Hernandez break a kneecap in a most innocuous bit of contact.

That should make their undertaking seem an innocuous bit of research, perhaps by someone with nothing better to do.

Commander Twelvetrees took the computer tapes almost reverently, staring at the innocuous bits of flat plastic as he turned them around in his big hands.

It tried to fasten on innocuous bits of bark and leaf, but the scourge of curiosity forced it to leave them behind.

"New information, sometimes an innocuous small bit of information, can be crucial to breaking these decades-old cases," Mr. Gonzales said.

The shuttle's stealth field was still intact, thank the Prophets, still making it look like an innocuous bit of jungle.

In a 1984 directive, President Reagan likened information to a mosaic, saying that bits of unclassified data, innocuous in isolation, "can reveal highly classified and other sensitive information when taken in aggregate."