"Did you notice that he waltzed all around the real reason for the
anchor-setting program without quite hitting it?"

St. Simon smiled humorlessly. "Sure. Notice the wording of the letter.
He still thinks in terms of the Team, even when he's trying not to. He
thinks we do this just to train men to have a real good Team Spirit. He
can't see that that is only a very useful by-product."

"How could he think otherwise?" Alhamid asked. "To him, or to Tarnhorst,
the notion of deliberately tailoring a program so that it would kill off
the fools and the incompetents, setting up a program that will
deliberately destroy the men who are dangerous to society, would be
horrifying. They would accuse us of being soulless butchers who had no
respect for the dignity of the human soul."

"We're not butchering anybody," St. Simon objected. "Nobody is forced to
go through two years of anchor setting. Nobody is forced to die. We're
not running people into gas chambers or anything like that."

"No; of course not. But would you expect an Earthman like Tarnhorst to
see the difference? How could we explain to him that we have no
objection to fools other than that we object to putting them in
positions where they can harm others by their foolishness? Would you
expect him to understand that we must have a method of eliminating those
who are neither competent enough to be trusted with the lives of others
nor wise enough to see that they are not competent? How would you tell
him that the reason we send men out alone is so that if he destroys
anyone by his foolishness--after we have taught him everything we know
in the best way we know how--he will only destroy himself?"

"I wouldn't even try," St. Simon said. "There's an old saying that
neither money, education, liquor, nor women ever made a fool of a man,
they just give a born fool a chance to display his foolishness. Space
ought to be added to that list."

"Did you notice something else about that letter?" Alhamid asked. "I
mean, the very fact that he wrote a letter instead of telling you
personally?"

"Sure. He didn't trust me. He was afraid I, or someone else, would
dispose of him if we knew he knew our secret."

"I think that's it," Alhamid agreed. "He wanted to be safely away
first."

"Killing him would have brought down the biggest investigation the Earth
Congress has launched since the crack-up of the Earth-Luna ship thirty
years ago. Does he think we are fools?"

"You can't