u could exploit other planets? We will not. You would get
nowhere, even if you had an interstellar drive right now. You,
personally, are a perfect example of what is wrong with this planet.
Rapacious, insatiable; you violate every concept of ethics, common
decency, and social responsibility. Your world's technology is so far
ahead of its sociology that you not only should be, but actually are
being, held in quarantine."

"_What?_"

"Exactly. One race I know of has been inspecting you regularly for
several hundreds of your years. They will not make contact with you, or
allow you to leave your own world, until you grow up to something beyond
the irresponsible-baby stage. Thus, about two and one-half of your years
ago, a starship of that race sent down a sensing element--unmanned, of
course--to check your state of development. Brother Sovig volatilized it
with an atomic missile."

"We did not do it," the dictator declared. "It was the war-mongering
capitalists."

"You brainless, mindless, contemptible idiot," Garlock sneered. "Are
even you actually stupid enough to try to lie with your mind? To minds
linked to your own and to mine?"

"We did do it, then, but it was only a flying saucer."

"Just as this ship was, to you, only a flying saucer, I suppose. So
here's something else for you to think about, Brother Sovig, with
whatever power your alleged brain is able to generate. When you shot
down that sensor, the starship did not retaliate, but went on without
taking any notice of you. When you tried to shoot _us_ down, we took
some slight action, but did not kill anyone and are now discussing the
situation. Listen carefully now, and remember--it is very possible that
the next craft you attack in such utterly idiotic fashion will, without
any more warning than you gave, blow this whole planet into a ball of
incandescent gas."

"Can that actually be done?" the scientist asked. For the first time, he
became really interested in the proceedings.

"Very easily, Doctor Cheswick," Garlock replied. "We could do it
ourselves with scarcely any effort and at very small cost. You are
familiar, I suppose, with the phenomenon of ball lightning?"

"Somewhat. Its mechanism has never been elucidated in any very
satisfactory mathematics."

"Well, we have at our disposal a field some...."

"Hold it, Clee," James warned. "Do you want to put out that kind of
stuff around here?"

"Um ... m ... m. What do you think?"

*