"Then you know?"
"Yes!" It was almost a whisper, almost a telepathic assent. "But here's our energy center, let's go on in."
Once within the vast dining-hall, known as an Energy Center, they selected a table and from the menu the number of the meal that suited them, pressing the numerically corresponding stud on the panel above the table. The food came on a conveyor belt that passed beneath the floor and emerged from the center of the table which was hollow and had a panel that slid aside as the food arrived.
"Well, what have you learned," Palanth asked Mark as they began their meal.
Mark Lynn outlined what he knew and added a few conjectures of his own, and Palanth's face split gradually in a wide grin.
"A pretty mess.... How many of you flesh-eating mammals are there left to transport ... the irreconcilables, I mean, the dissenters."
"Roughly about five hundred million. They're an amazing mixture of Internationals, Philosophers and Ruralians—the three most individualistic strata!"
"It would be easier to ray them down, let the Comet wipe them out in due time, than to go to all this trouble of persuading them to evacuate." Palanth retorted coldly. "Still, to my Martian mind, they're far more valuable than your herds of controlled sheep—at least, they can think for themselves!"
"However, in a controlled, beneficent political economy such as the World State, any such benevolent treatment as raying them down, or abandoning them to sidereal extinction is outlawed," a quiet, mellow voice said behind them.