("Hello,” whispered Reuters to the B.B.C. “We’re in luck. He’s going to make a major policy statement. I know the symptoms.)
“And there are other reasons why we have restricted the human race to Earth. Watch.”
The lights dimmed and vanished. As they faded, a milky opalescence formed in the centre of the room. It congealed into a whirlpool of stars — a spiral nebula seen from a point far beyond its outermost sun.
“No human eyes have ever seen this sight before,” said Karellen’s voice from the darkness. “You are looking at your own Universe, the island galaxy of which your sun is a member, from a distance of half a million light-years.”
There was a long silence. Then Karellen continued, and now his voice held something that was not quite pity and not precisely scorn.
“Your race has shown a notable incapacity for dealing with the problems of its own rather small planet. When we arrived, you were on the point of destroying yourselves with the powers that science had rashly given you. Without our intervention, the Earth today would be a radioactive wilderness.
“Now you have a world at peace, and a united race. Soon you will be sufficiently civilized to run your planet without our assistance. Perhaps you could eventually handle the problems of an entire solar system — say fifty moons and planets. But do you really imagine that you could ever cope with this?”
The nebula expanded. Now the individual stars were rushing past, appearing and vanishing as swiftly as sparks from a forge. And each of those transient sparks was a sun, with who knew how many circling worlds….
“In this single galaxy of ours,” murmured Karellen, “there are eighty-seven thousand million suns. Even that figure gives only a faint idea of the immensity of space. In challenging it, you would be like ants attempting to label and classify all the grains of sand in all the deserts of the world.
“Your race, in its present stage of evolution, cannot face that stupendous challenge. One of my duties has been to protect you from the powers and forces that lie among the stars — forces beyond anything that you can ever imagine.”