“Their size would not matter, if they have handweapons that may well be superior to our artillery.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I had this partly in mind from the first.” The Industrialist went on. “It is for that reason I agreed to see them after I received your letter. Not to agree to an unsettling and impossible trade, but to judge their real purposes. I did not count on their evading the meeting.”
He sighed. “I suppose it isn’t our fault. You are right in one thing, at any rate. The world has been at peace too long. We are losing a healthy sense of suspicion.”
The Astronomer’s mild voice rose to an unusual pitch and he said, “I will speak. I tell you that there is no reason to suppose they can possibly be hostile. They are small, yes, but that is only important because it is a reflection of the fact that their native worlds are small. Our world has what is for them a normal gravity, but because of our much higher gravitational potential, our atmosphere is too dense to support them comfortably over sustained periods. For a similar reason the use of the world as a base for interstellar travel, except for trade in certain items, is uneconomical. And there are important differences in chemistry of life due to the basic differences in soils. They couldn’t eat our food or we theirs.”
“Surely all this can be overcome. They can bring their own food, build domed stations of lowered air pressure, devise specially designed ships.”
“They can. And how glibly you can describe feats that are easy to a race in its youth. It is simply that they don’t have to do any of that. There are millions of worlds suitable for them in the Galaxy. They don’t need this one which isn’t.”
“How do you know? All this is their information again.”
“This I was able to check independently. I am an astronomer, after all.”
“That is true. Let me hear what you have to say then, while we walk.”