lanetary bedrock.

Finally, unable either to kill or to enslave each other, the
comparatively few survivors made a peace of sorts. Since their own space
was practically barren of planetary systems, they would move their
planet from space to space until they found one which so teemed with
planets that each living Eddorian could become the sole Master of an
ever increasing number of worlds. This was a program very much
worthwhile, promising as it did an outlet for even the recognizedly
insatiable Eddorian craving for power. Therefore the Eddorians, for the
first time in their prodigiously long history of fanatical
non-cooperation, decided to pool their resources of mind and of material
and to work as a group.

Union of a sort was accomplished eventually; neither peaceably nor
without highly lethal friction. They knew that a democracy, by its very
nature, was inefficient; hence a democratic form of government was not
even considered. An efficient government must of necessity be
dictatorial. Nor were they all exactly alike or of exactly equal
ability; perfect identity of any two such complex structures was in fact
impossible, and any difference, however slight, was ample justification
for stratification in such a society as theirs.

Thus one of them, fractionally more powerful and more ruthless than the
rest, became the All-Highest--His Ultimate Supremacy--and a group of
about a dozen others, only infinitesimally weaker, became his Council; a
cabinet which was later to become known as the Innermost Circle. The
tally of this cabinet varied somewhat from age to age; increasing by one
when a member divided, decreasing by one when a jealous fellow or an
envious underling managed to perpetrate a successful assassination.

And thus, at long last, the Eddorians began really to work together.
There resulted, among other things, the hyper-spatial tube and the fully
inertialess drive--the drive which was, millions of years later, to be
given to Civilization by an Arisian operating under the name of
Bergenholm. Another result, which occured shortly after the galactic
inter-passage had begun, was the eruption into normal space of the
planet Eddore.

"I must now decide whether to make this space our permanent headquarters
or to search farther," the All-Highest radiated harshly to his Council.
"On the one hand, it will take some time for even those planets which
have already formed to cool. Still more will be required for life to
d