It was Harlow's voice asking, "How is he now?" The "now" was an irony, since even at second-order speeds, his voice had taken fourteen minutes to reach them, and he would not hear the answer for another fourteen.
Samson, in orange pajamas, very pale, said, "Ready to talk, Papa." He looked at the ceiling. "Don't think I need the hypno. I can remember most of it. Fuzzy—a dreamlike quality to it—but I think it's almost all there."
"I've already had you under hypno," said Midge quietly. "As soon as I got you inside."
Samson turned his head to look at her. "So? What for?"
"I wanted to find out if you'd had your soul saved."
Samson grinned weakly. "Is it likely? Harlow—get this. The Kassids aren't invaders in the usual meaning of the term. They haven't got any mind-rays or insidious hypnotic powers, and they aren't interested in taking over anybody's property. That's the first thing. Second, they're not a race and they're not an empire. I saw at least twenty different life-forms aboard their ship, and I learned enough to know that they were all Kassids. That would seem to account for that business in the legends about their being able to change forms. The local lads thought the same thing about us at first, remember, on account of our having two sexes. Over to you."
"An interesting conundrum," Harlow commented, fourteen minutes later. "They're neither a race nor an empire. What are they? Over."
"They're an idea," said Samson grimly. "The idea is a pretty complex one, and I don't think I got all of it, luckily. The effect of that arnophrene, at a guess, was to drop my I.Q. about forty or fifty points. But I can tell you what it is: it's a completely convincing argument—on the emotional and logical levels—why you should never break the peace or stop loving your neighbor. If you're thinking that you've heard arguments like that before, and we're still the same old robbing, raping and fire-setting crew, you're wrong. You haven't heard this one. I'm telling you that I only got the fringe of it, and it made me want to bawl. Once you've heard it—if you've got the intellect to take it completely—you'll never forget it for a minute, and you won't find any loopholes. You won't backslide, and you won't be a Sunday believer. You'd sooner cut your throat."
"Over," added Midge quietly.
Samson smiled at her and waited for Harlow's reply.