--monsters."

"What do you look like?" Sophia demanded while Temple stood there
shaking his head and muttering to himself.

* * * * *

"You couldn't see me, I am afraid. I was the representative here to
see how things were going, and when my people found you of the Earth
divided yourselves into two camps they realized they had been
considering your abilities in halves. Put together, you are probably
the top culture of your galaxy."

"So, we win," said Temple.

"Right and wrong. You lose. Earthmen will become hosts. Know what a
back-seat driver is, Temple? You would be a back seat driver in your
own body. Thinking, feeling, wanting to make decisions, but unable to.
Eating when the parasite wants to, sleeping at his command, fighting,
loving, living as he wills it. And perishing when he wants a new
garment. Oh, they offer something in return. Their culture, their way
of life, their scientific, economic, social system. It's good, too.
But not worth it. Did you know that their economic struggle between
democratic capitalism and totalitarian communism ended almost half a
million years ago? What they have now is a system you couldn't even
understand."

"Well," Temple mused, "even if everything you said were true--"

"Don't tell me you don't believe me?"

"If it were true and we wanted to do something about it, what could we
do?"

"Now, nothing. Nothing but delay things by striking swiftly and
letting fifty centuries of time perform your rearguard action. Destroy
the one means your enemy has of reaching Earth within foreseeable time
and you have destroyed his power to invade for a hundred centuries. He
can still reach Earth, but the same way you journeyed to Nowhere. Ten
thousand years of space travel in suspended animation. You saw me that
way once, Temple, and wondered. You thought I was dead, but that is
another story.

"Anyway, let my people invade your planet, ten thousand years hence.
If Earth takes the right direction, if democracy and free thought and
individual enterprise win over totalitarian standardization as I think
they will, your people will be more than a match for the decadent
parasites who may or may not have sufficient initiative to cross space
the slow way and attempt invasion in ten thousand years."

"Ten thousand?" said Temple.

"Five from Earth to Nowhere. The distance to my home is far greater,
but the rate of travel can be increased. Ten thousand years."