“You’re talking nonsense,” she snapped at him. “Pyrrus isn’t an island and battling for survival is definitely not a game.”

“I’m sorry,” he smiled. “I was using a figure of speech, and a badly chosen one at that. Let’s put the problem on more concrete terms. Ta an example. Suppose I were to tell you that over there, hanging from the doorframe, was a stingwing-”

Meta’s gun was pointing at the door before he finished the last word There was a crash as the guard’s chair went over. He had jumped from a half-doze to full alertness in an instant, his gun also searching the doorframe.

“That was just an example,” Jason said. “There’s really nothing there.” The guard’s gun vanished and he scowled a look of contempt at Jason, as he righted the chair and dropped into it.

“You both have proved yourself capable of handling a Pyrran problem,” Jason continued. “But what if I said that there is a thing hanging from the doorframe that looks like a stingwing, but is really a kind of large insect that spins a fine silk that can be used to weave clothes?”

The guard glared from under his thick eyebrows at the empty doorframe, his gun whined part way out, then snapped back into the holster. He growled something inaudible at Jason, then stamped into the outer room, slamming the door behind him. Meta frowned in concentration and looked puzzled.

“It couldn’t be anything except a stingwing,” she finally said. “Nothing else could possibly look like that. And even if it didn’t spin silk, it would bite if you got near, so you would have to kill it.” She smiled with satisfaction at the indestructible logic of her answer.

“Wrong again,” Jason said. “I just described the mimic-spinner that lives on Stover’s Planet. It imitates the most violent forms of life there, does such a good job that it has no need for other defenses. It’ll sit quietly on your hand and spin for you by the yard.

If I dropped a shipload of them here on Pyrrus, you never could be sure when to shoot, could you?”

“But they are not here now,” Meta insisted.

“Yet they could be quite easily. And if they were, all the rules of your game would change. Getting the idea now? There are some fixed laws and rules in the galaxy-but they’re not the ones you live by. Your rule is war unending with the local life. I want to step outside your rule book and end that war. Wouldn’t you like that? Wouldn’t you like an existence that was more than just an endless battle for survival? A life with a chance for happiness, love, music, art-all the enjoyable things you have never had the time for.”