"Engineers I Hire."

In Poul Anderson's The Man Who Counts, also called War Of The Wing-Men, bat-winged aliens fight each other. In James Blish's Black Easter, demons fight the heavenly host off-stage and in the sequel, The Day After Judgment, they fight the Strategic Air Command on-stage.

Nicholas van Rijn, spice merchant and title character of The Man Who Counts, states the point of the novel:

"'Bah! Details! I am not an engineer. Engineers I hire. My job is not to do what is impossible, it is to make others do it for me.'" (VI, p. 371)

In Black Easter, Baines, arms merchant and aesthete of destruction, having commissioned a major demonic conjuration, asks his scientific adviser:

"'Are you happier with electrons than with demons? Okay, good for you.'"
-James Blish, Black Easter (New York, 1977), XVI, p. 157.

But he then adds that the distinction between particles and demons is one of those technicalities that he hires people like the scientist and the magician not to bother him with. The difference between van Rijn and Baines is that the former considers the moral consequences of his actions.