“On this planet, the distinction is probably narrow to the point of invisibility. Their weather men would have to be first-rate solar physicists. I must have seemed to them like a self-opinionated, bungling incompetent — insisting time after time on the feasibility of a plan whose greatest flaw would have been obvious to a Heklan layman. I don’t want to go back to that station, Alf — I couldn’t face one of those people now.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to,” replied Vickers. “I sympathize with you, and am extremely sorry for your sake that it turned out this way; but from my point of view it’s the best thing that could have happened. I hoped for something good to eventuate from your visit, but I didn’t dare hope for this much.”
Rodin’s interjection at this point was of an interrogative and profane nature. Vickers smiled slightly, set the ship in motion once again toward Observatory Hill, and began to explain.
“I told you at the time of your arrival,” he said, “that I feared I had unwittingly aroused in our hosts a fear of the competitive aspects of our Federation culture. That was quite true and correct, so far as it went. There was a little more than that to the situation, however. The Heklans had appreciated a still more fundamental fact about us. With interplanetary and interstellar travel, an already existing and working form of interworld government, with our knowledge of space and time and matter which cropped up occasionally and inevitably in my conversations with Serrnak Deg, it was glaringly obvious to them that our civilization was materially far in advance of theirs; that their achievements, compared to ours, were childish. As that realization sank in, they began to react in a fashion too painfully human not to be recognized.
“If something weren’t done about that reaction, Hekla would not only refuse the minor dealing with us such as our attempt to sell them metal and machines represents — they would, for their own protection, refuse to have anything whatever to do with the Federation and its component races. You know what has happened on other planets when a culturally and mentally inferior race was forced into contact with their betters. They died out, rapidly, and the cause was not deliberate extermination. In many cases, strenuous efforts were made to preserve them. Such things happened on Earth long before man left the planet; and it has happened all over the Galaxy since then.
“The Heklans are not our mental inferiors; they are intelligent enough to recognize a danger which must have been completely new to them, and to act on it in the only possible way — although that way is not a very good one, even from their own viewpoint. They may get rid of us, but they would have a hard time forgetting us.”
“Are you sure they recognize the danger?” interjected Rodin.
“Reasonably sure; and even if they don’t, it is none the less real — and our making fools of ourselves is just as good a cure. We showed them a field — probably not the only one, but certainly the most obvious — in which they are not merely our equals but have advanced far beyond us. We showed them in a way that will penetrate — their sense of humor seems to be as well developed as ours; and we showed them at the relatively minor price of your reputation — and mine, of course.” The last phrase was an afterthought inspired by Rodin’s attitude. The meteorologist calmed himself again with an effort, and asked a question.
“When did you realize what was happening to them, and what led you to that belief?”
“After my first long conversation with Serrnak Deg, I started to return to the ship alone. By an error, I stopped the elevator at the wrong level, and saw a room full of electrical machinery. I am not a scientist, but I think I know a teletype keyboard when I see it. Before I could see more, I was hustled out of the room. When I got back to the ship, I spent quite a while searching the frequency bands we have found practical for communication. I heard nothing, and yet the station was obviously in constant contact with the rest of the planet — even I know that a weather map can’t be kept up to date otherwise. Disregarding the remote chance that they had either medium transmitters or a means of radiant communication undreamed of by us, it seemed obvious that the station was actually connected by metallic cables with other centers of communication. The method is primitive, as even you will admit; why should they conceal the installation from me, if they were not ashamed of its simplicity?