or. "They set themselves up as judges in the Universe?"

"That's about the way they operate, to put it bluntly," said Connemorra.
"You can call them a thousand unpleasant names, but you can't change the
fact of their existence, nor the fact of their successful operation for
a period as long as the age of the human race.

"They would never have made their existence known to us if we had not
begun sending our ships into space. But once we did that we were
entering territory staked out by races that were there when we crawled
out of our caves. Who can say what their rights are?"

"But to pass judgment on entire worlds--"

"We have no choice but to accept that such judgment is passed."

"And their judgment of Earth--?"

"Was that Earth was not ready for Council membership. Earthmen are still
making too many blunders to join creatures that could cross the galaxy
at the speed of light when we were learning how to chip flint."

"But they didn't wipe us out!"

* * * * *

James Connemorra looked out at the stars. "I wonder," he said. "I
wonder--"

"What do you mean?" Mel said in a tight voice.

"We have defects which are not quite like any they have encountered
before. We have developed skills in the manufacture of artifacts, but we
have no capacity for using them. For example, we have developed vast
systems of communication, but these systems have not improved our
communications they have actually blocked communication."

"That's crazy!" said Mel. "Do they suppose smoke signals are superior to
the 3-d screens in our homes?"

"As a matter of fact, they do. And so do I. When a man must resort to
smoke signals he is very certain that he has something to say before he
goes to the trouble of putting the message in the air. But our fabulous
screens prevent us from communicating with each other by throwing up a
wall of pseudo-communication that we can't get through. We subject
ourselves to a barrage of sound and light that has a communication
content of almost zero.

"The same is true of our inventions in transportation. We have efficient
means of travel to all parts of the world and now to the Universe
itself. But we don't travel. We use our machines to block traveling."

"I can understand the first argument, but not this one!" said Mel.

"We move our bodies to new locations with our machines, but our minds
remain at home. We take our rutted thoughts, our predispositions, our
cultural