"Not at all," interposed Worsel. "The few of my people who know of you have been instructed to seal that knowledge. I must admit, however, that I am greatly disturbed by your conceptions of these pirates of space. You see, until I met you I knew nothing more of the pirates than I did of your patrol."
"What a world!" VanBuskirk exclaimed. "No patrol and no pirates! But at that, life might be simpler without both of them and without the free space drive—more like it used to be in the good old airplane days that the novelists rave about."
"Of course, I could not judge as to that." The Velantian was very serious. "This in which we live seems to be an out-of-the-way section of the galaxy; or it may be that we have nothing that the pirates want."
"More likely it's simply that, like the patrol, they haven't got organized into this district yet," suggested Kinnison. "There are so many millions of solar systems in the galaxy that it will probably be thousands of years yet before the patrol gets into them all."
"But about these pirates," Worsel went back to his point. "If they have such minds as those of the Overlords, they will be able to break the seals of our minds. However, I gather from your thoughts that their minds are not of that strength?"
"Not so far as I know," Kinnison replied. "You folks have the most powerful brains I ever heard of, short of the Arisians. And speaking of mental power, you can hear thoughts a lot farther than I can, even with my Lens or with this pirate receiver I've got. See if you can find out whether there are any pirates in space around here, will you?"
While the Velantian was concentrating, VanBuskirk asked: "Why, if his mind is so strong, could the Overlords put him under so much easier than they could us 'weak-minded' humans?"
"You are confusing 'mind' with 'will,' I think. Ages of submission to the Overlords made the Velantians' will power zero, as far as the bosses were concerned. On the other hand, you and I could raise stubbornness to sell to most people. In fact, if the Overlords had succeeded in really breaking us down, back there, I believe that we would have been insane for the rest of our lives."
"Probably you're right. We break, but don't bend, huh?"