Discussion dragged on. I took small part. My mind wandered and wondered. I didn’t speak, lest I jeopardize the solution that was being hammered out. But take these people, I thought. A world battled them for generations. What those now alive had experienced was of no importance compared to what their germ plasm had experienced. With that natural selection in their past, what would they do with their future?

Ten thousand of them among billions—set down in the worst lands on Earth—could make a difference? Nonsense!

I got rid of the notion. I took command of my ship and went off on a voyage. I came home after eighty-five years and found that I had not thought nonsense after all.

Eventide

Gone sunset amberful, the lake
Lies mirror-quiet for the pines
That ring it round with shadow heights
Through which a ghost of golden shines
To burnish blue those metal bits
Above the water, wing and wing,
Where, silent as in space itself,
Three dragonflies are cometing.

Enough Rope

Hurulta, Arkazhik of Unzuvan, fitted his own personality. A magnificent specimen of Ulugani malehood, two and a half meters tall, so broad that he seemed shorter, he dwarfed the thin red-haired human before him. His robes were a barbaric shout of color, as if he were draped in fire and rainbows, and the volume of his speaking made the fine crystal ornaments in the audience chamber tremble and sing, ever so faintly. But the words were hard and steady and utterly cold.

“Our will in this matter is unshakable,” he said curtly. “If the League wants to go to war over it, that will be the League’s misfortune.”

Wing Alak of Sol III and the Galactic League Patrol looked up into the hairless blue face and ventured an urbane smile. The Ulugani were humanoid to several degrees of classification—six fingers to a hand, clawed feet, pointed ears, and the rest meant little when you dealt with the fantastic variety of intelligent life making up Alak’s compatriots. This race looked primitive—small head, beetling eyebrow ridges, flat nose and prognathous jaw—but inside, they were as bright as any other known species.

Too bright!

“It would be straining the obvious, your excellency,” said Alak, “to point out that the Unzuvan Empire comprises just one planetary system of which only Ulugan is habitable, whereas the Galactic League embraces a good million stars. It cannot have been omitted from all calculation. But I must say that, under these circumstances, I am puzzled; perhaps your excellency would condescend to enlighten me with regard to your attitude on this disparity.”

Hurulta snorted, showing a formidable mouthful of teeth. During the years in which Alak, as chief representative of the League and its Patrol, had been visiting Ulugan—off and on—and particularly during the past several months of mounting crisis during which Alak had been here continuously, he had learned to regard the Solarian as a weak, wordy, and pedantic bumbler. Now one huge blue fist crashed into the palm of the other hand and he grinned contemptuously.