Watch for the clues, Morley had said, pacing up and down the room. Send us back the clues and we will do the rest. A foot in the door is all we expect from you. Give us a foot inside the door and that is all we need.
Let us look for facts.
The Kimonians are a race more culturally advanced than we are, which means, in other words, that they are further along the road of evolution, farther from the ape. And what does it take to advance along the evolutionary road beyond the high tide of my own race of Earth?
Not mere intelligence alone, for that is not enough.
What then would it take to make the next major stride in evolution?
Perhaps philosophy rather than intelligence - a seeking for a way to put to better use the intelligence that one already had, a greater understanding and a more adequate appreciation of human values in relation to the universe.
And if the Kimonians had that greater understanding, if they had won their way through better understanding to closer brotherhood with the galaxy, then it would be inconceivable that they'd take the members of another intelligent race to serve as puppy dogs for children. Or even as playmates for their children, unless in the fact of playing with their children there be some greater value, not to their child alone, but to the child of Earth, than the happiness and wonder of such association. They would be alive to the psychic damage that might be done because of such a practice, would not for a moment run the danger of that damage happening unless out of it might come some improvement or some change.
He sat and thought of it and it seemed right, for even on his native planet, history showed increasing concern with social values, with the improvement of the culture.
And something else.
Parapsychic powers must not come too soon in human evolution, for they could be used disastrously by a culture that was not equipped emotionally and intellectually to handle them. No culture which had not reached an adult stage could have parapsychic powers, for they were nothing to be fooled around with by an adolescent culture.