"Without a knowledge of nuclear physics, the
invention of the telectroscope is impossible. The lack of opportunity to
watch the stars that might teach them something would delay their
knowledge of atomic structure. They might learn a great deal about
chemistry and Newtonian physics, and go quite a ways with math, but even
there they would be handicapped. Morey, for instance, would never have
developed the autointegral calculus, to say nothing of tensor and spinor
calculus, which were developed two hundred years ago, without the
knowledge of the problems of space to develop the need. I'm afraid such
a race would be quite a bit behind us in science.

"Suppose, on the other hand, we visit a race that's far ahead of us.
We'd better not stay there long; think what they might do to us. They
might decide our ship was too threatening and simply wipe us out. Or
they might even be so far advanced that we would mean nothing to them at
all--like ants or little squalling babies." Arcot laughed at the
thought.

"That isn't a very complimentary picture," objected Fuller. "With the
wonderful advances we've made, there just isn't that much left to be
able to say we're so little."

"Fuller, I'm surprised at you!" Arcot said. "Today, we are only opening
our eyes on the world of science. Our race has only a few thousand years
behind it and hundreds of millions yet to come. How can any man of
today, with his freshly-opened eyes of science, take in the mighty
pyramid of knowledge that will be built up in those long, long years of
the future? It's too gigantic to grasp; we can't imagine the things that
the ever-expanding mind of man will discover."

Arcot's voice slowed, and a far-off look came in his eyes.

"You might say there can be no greater energy than that of matter
annihilation. I doubt that. I have seen hints of something new--an
energy so vast--so transcendently tremendous--that it frightens me. The
energies of all the mighty suns of all the galaxies--of the whole
cosmos--in the hand of man! The energy of a billion billion billion
suns! And every sun pouring out its energy at the rate of quintillions
of horsepower every instant!

"But it's too great for man to have--I am going to forget it, lest man
be destroyed by his own might."

Arcot's halting speech told of his intense thought--of a dream of such
awful energies as man had never before conceived. His eyes looked
unseeing at the black velvet of space with its few, scatte