w of
averages I should be ten times dead."

"Even if all you say is true, Jason," Meta said, "you are still the only
person who can help us. What will the future be like?"

Suddenly weary, Jason slumped into the pilot's chair. He glanced around
at the circle of people. They seemed sincere. None of them even appeared
to have noticed that he no longer had his hand on the pump switch. For
the moment at least, the war between city and farm was forgotten.

"I'll give you my conclusions," Jason said, twisting in the chair,
trying to find a comfortable position for his aching bones. "I've been
doing a lot of thinking the last day or two, searching for the answer.
The very first thing I realized, was that the perfect and logical
solution wouldn't do at all. I'm afraid the old ideal of the lion lying
down with the lamb doesn't work out in practice. About all it does is
make a fast lunch for the lion. Ideally, now that you all know the real
causes of your trouble, you should tear down the perimeter and have the
city and forest people mingle in brotherly love. Makes just as pretty a
picture as the one of lion and lamb. And would undoubtedly have the same
result. Someone would remember how really filthy the grubbers are, or
how stupid junkmen can be, and there would be a fresh corpse cooling.
The fight would spread and the victors would be eaten by the wildlife
that swarmed over the undefended perimeter. No, the answer isn't that
easy."

As the Pyrrans listened to him they realized where they were, and
glanced around uneasily. The guards raised their crossbows again, and
the prisoners stepped back to the wall and looked surly.

"See what I mean?" Jason asked. "Didn't take long did it?" They all
looked a little sheepish at their unthinking reactions.

"If we're going to find a decent plan for the future, we'll have to
take inertia into consideration. Mental inertia for one. Just because
you know a thing is true in theory, doesn't make it true in fact. The
barbaric religions of primitive worlds hold not a germ of scientific
fact, though they claim to explain all. Yet if one of these savages has
all the logical ground for his beliefs taken away--he doesn't stop
believing. He then calls his mistaken beliefs 'faith' because he knows
they are right. And he knows they are right because he has faith. This
is an unbreakable circle of false logic that can't be touched. In
reality, it is plain mental inertia. A case of thinking 'what al