ee, from a
guy who's going to be monarch of all he surveys?"

"His conscience aches him," Belle explained. "This monarching business
is tough if you haven't thought about how to monarch, and he hasn't.
Have you, Clee?"

"Not a lick." Garlock smiled slightly. "I been busy."

"You better start to," she advised, darkly. "You aren't busy now and we
have an hour. We better confer--I'll make like a slave-driver."

They 'ported into his room and he set the blocks. His attitude changed
instantly. "Nice act, Belle. What was it all about?"

"That theory of yours. Your predictions are too uncannily accurate to be
guesswork, and the more times you dead-center the bullseye the worse
scared I get. I really want to know, Clee."

"Okay. It isn't complete--I need a lot more data--but I'll show you what
I have. It's fairly strong medicine and it comes in big chunks."

"It would have to--it covers the whole macrocosmic universe, doesn't
it?"

"Yes. I'll start with the striking fact that, on every out-galaxy planet
we visited, the human beings were _Homo sapiens_ to N decimal places.
Fertile with each other and, according to expert testimony, with us. All
planets had humanoid 'guardians,' the Arpalones and Arpales. Some, but
not all, had one or more non-human, more-or-less-intelligent races, such
as the Fumapties, the Lemarts, the Sencors, and so on. These other races
never seemed to fight each other, but both races of Guardians fought any
and all of them, on sight and to the death. What do those facts mean to
you?"

* * *

"Nothing beyond face value. I've thought about them but I haven't been
able to come up with anything."

"I have." He unrolled a sheet of drafting paper covered with diagrams,
symbols, and equations. "But before I go into this stuff, consider the
human body. How many red cells are there in your blood stream?"

"Billions, I suppose."

"And there are billions of human beings on billions of planets; each
having red blood cells identical, as far as we know, with yours and
mine. Also white cells. Also, sometimes, various kinds of pathogenic
micro-organisms, such as staphs, streps, viruses, spiros, and so on.

"Okay. My thought is that the Lemarts, Ozobes, and the like are
analogous to disease-producing organisms. We saw the full range of
effects--from none at all up to death itself."

"But they--the Ozobes and so on--died, too."

* * *

"How long do