"But why should that be?" Hunt asked. "Why should the Ganymeans feel that we have some unique advantage, especially with their different background? They achieved the same things . . .and more."

"Because of the time it's taken you to do it," she said.

"Time?"

"Your rate of advancement. It's stupendous! Haven't Earthmen realized? No, I don't suppose there's any reason why they should." She looked at him again, seemingly at a loss for a second. "How long ago did Man harness steam? It took you less than seventy years from learning to fly to reach your Moon. Twenty years after you invented transistors half your world was being run by computers. . . ."

"That's good, compared to Minerva?"

"Good! It's miraculous! It makes our own development pale into insignificance. And it's getting faster all the time! It's because you attack Nature with the same innate aggressiveness that you hurl at anything that stands in your way. You don't hack each other to pieces or bomb whole cities anymore, but the same instinct is still there in your scientists, engineers . . . your businessmen, your politicians. They all love a good fight. They thrive on it. That's the difference between us. The Ganymean learns for knowledge and finds that he solves problems as a by-product; the Earthman takes on a problem and finds that he's learned something when he's solved it, but it's the kick he gets out of fighting and winning that matters. Garuth summed it up fairly well when I was talking to him yesterday. I asked him if he thought that any of the Earthmen really believed in this God they talk about. Know what he said?"

"What'd he say?"

"'They will once they've made Him.'"

Hunt couldn't help grinning at Garuth's bemusement that was at the same time a compliment. He was about to reply when ZORAC spoke into his ear in its own voice:

"Excuse me, Dr. Hunt."

"Yes?"

"A Sergeant Brukhov wants to talk for a second. Are you accepting calls?"

"Excuse me a minute," he said to Shilohin. "Okay. Put him on."

"Dr. Hunt?" The voice of one of the UNSA pilots came through clearly.

"Here."

"Sorry to bother you, but we're sorting out the arrangements for getting everybody back to Pithead. I'm taking a transporter back half an hour from now and I've got a couple of empty seats. Also there's a Ganymean ship leaving about an hour later and some of the guys are hitching a ride on it. You're on the list to go; it's your choice which way."

"Any idea who's going on the Ganymean ship?"

"Don't know who they are, but they're standing right in front of me. I'm in the big room that the conference was held in."

"Give me a shot, would you?" Hunt asked.

He activated his wrist unit and observed the view being picked up by Brukhov's headband. It showed a group of faces that Hunt recognized at once, all of them from the labs at Pithead. Carizan was there. . . so was Frank Towers.

"Thanks for the offer," Hunt said. "I'll go with them though."

"Okay. . . oh. . . hang on a sec. . ." Indistinct background noises, then Brukhov again. "One of them wants to know where the hell you've got to."

"Tell him I've found the bar."

More noises.

"He wants to know where the hell that is."

"Okay, look over at the wall," Hunt replied. "Now follow it along to your left. . . a bit farther. . ." He watched the image move across the screen. "Hold it there. You're looking at the main door."

"Check."

"Through there, turn right and follow the passage. They can't miss it. Drinks are on the house; order through ZORAC."

"Okay, I got it. They say they'll see you there in a coupla minutes. Over and out."

"Channel cleared down," ZORAC informed him.

"Sorry about that," Hunt said to Shilohin. "We've got company on the way."

"Earthmen?"

"Bunch of drunks from up north. I made the mistake of telling them where we are."

She laughed--he could recognize the sound now--and then, slowly, her mood became serious again. "You strike me as a very rational and level-headed Earthman. There is something that we have never mentioned before because we were unsure of the reactions it might produce, but I feel it is something that we can talk about here."

"Go on." Hunt sensed that she had been giving some thought to whatever the matter was while he had been talking to the pilot. He detected a subtle change in her manner; she was not quite conveying that the topic was one of strict confidence, but that how he chose to use the information would be left to his own discretion. He knew his own kind better than she did.

"There was an occasion when the Ganymeans resorted to the use of willful violence. . . deliberate destruction of life."

Hunt waited in silence, unsure of what kind of response would be appropriate.

"You know," she went on, "about the problem that Minerva was experiencing--with the carbon-dioxide level rising. Well, one possible solution presented itself immediately--simply migrate to another planet. But this was at a time before there were any ships like the Shapieron . . . before we could travel to other stars. Therefore we could contemplate only the planets of the Solar System. Apart from Minerva itself, only one of them could have supported life."

Hunt looked at her blankly; the message had not quite registered.

"Earth," he said with a slight shrug.

"Yes, Earth. We could move our whole civilization to Earth. As you know, we sent expeditions to explore it, but when they sent back details of the environment that they found there, we knew that there could be no simple answer to Minerva's problems. Ganymeans could never have survived amid such savagery."

"So the idea was abandoned then?" Hunt suggested.

"No . . . not quite. You see, the whole terrestrial ecology and the creatures that formed part of it were thought by many Ganymeans to be so unnatural as to constitute a perversion of life itself--a smear upon an otherwise perfect universe that the universe would be a better place without." Hunt gaped at her as what she was saying began to sink in. "A suggestion was put forward that the whole planet be wiped clean of the disease that infested it. Terrestrial life would be exterminated, and then Minervan forms would be substituted. After all, the supporters of the scheme argued, it would be simply playing the game by Earth's own rules."

Hunt was stunned. After everything that had been said, the Ganymeans could actually have been capable of conceiving a scheme like that? She watched and seemed to read the thought in his mind.

"Most Ganymeans opposed the idea, instinctively, totally and without compromise. It was completely against their basic nature. The public protest that it provoked was probably the most vigorous in our whole history.

"Nevertheless, our own world was in danger of becoming uninhabitable, and some members of the government took the view that they had an obligation to investigate every possible alternative. So, in secret, they set up a small colony on Earth to experiment on a local scale." She saw the questions forming on Hunt's lips and held up a hand to forestall them. "Don't ask me where on Earth this colony was or what methods they employed to do the things they were sent there to do; I have great difficulty in speaking about this at all. Let us just say that the results were catastrophic. In some regions the ecology collapsed completely as a consequence of the things that were done and many terrestrial species became extinct during what you call the Oligocene period for this reason. Some of the areas affected remain deserts on Earth to this day."

Hunt didn't know what to say, so said nothing. The things he had just been told were shocking not because of the means or ends that they implied, which were all too familiar to humans, but because they were so unexpected. For him the conversation was a revelation and a staggering one at that, but no more. For the Ganymean, he realized, it was traumatic.