“Do you think we are savages here, Jason? We act and look like animals because we have to fight for existence on an animal level. Yet we know about the stars. In that chest over there, sealed in metal, are over thirty books, all we have. Fiction most of them, with some history and general science thrown in. Enough to keep alive the stories of the settlement here and the rest of the universe outside. We see the ships land in the city and we know that up there are worlds we can only dream about and never see.

Do you wonder that we hate these beasts that call themselves men, and would destroy them in an instant if we could? They are right to keep weapons from us-for sure as the sun rises in the morning we would kill them to a man if we were able, and take over the things they have withheld from us.”

It was a harsh condemnation, but essentially a truthful one. At least from the point of view of the outsiders. Jason didn’t try to explain to the angry man that the city Pyrrans looked on their attitude as being the only possible and logical one. “How did this battle between your two groups ever come about?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Rhes said, “I’ve thought about it many times, for there are no records of that period. We do know that we are all descended from colonists who arrived at the same time. Somewhere, some time, the two groups separated. Perhaps it was a war, I’ve re about them in the books. I have a partial theory, though I can’t prove that it was the location of the city.”

“Location-I don’t understand.”

“Well, you know the junkmen, and you’ve seen where their city They managed to put it right in the middle of the most savage spot this planet. You know they don’t care about any living thing except themselves; shoot and kill is their only logic. So they wouldn’t consider where to build their city, and managed to build it in the stupidest spot imaginable. I’m sure my ancestors saw how foolish this was and tried to tell them so. That would be reason enough for a war, wouldn’t it?”

“It might have been-if that’s really what happened,” Jason said “But I think you have the problem turned backward. It’s a war between native Pyrran life and humans, each fighting to destroy the other. The life forms change continually, seeking that final destruction of the invader.”