Carolyn looked at him with pity. "I'll tell you what would happen," she said. "You'd greet us with cheers and invite us in—long enough to steal our warp-generator. You'd trade us your medical science for our chemistry and your electronics for our gravities, and then you'd meet us face to face to prove to yourselves that even though you got a second-place start, you could move faster and hit harder than we could. You'd carry your war to us, and we'd carry our war to you, and there would be cause and effect and attack and retaliation with each blow a bit more vicious until your people would be planting mercurite at the same time we were. And then, as I say, the next interstellar race to visit this section of the sky would find the radioactive remains of two cultures. I know because our people come of the same stock."
He looked at her cynically. "Is that so? Where I come from it takes three people to sing a trio, Carolyn. How do you explain that?"
"That's a recessive mutation."
"All right," he snapped. "So you've justified your own actions to yourself."
"Of course. Everybody is self-justified."
"And you justify the doping of our race by calling it better than meeting us face to face."
"Remember your own history. Even before the First Atomic War everybody realized that warfare was a bankrupt measure to be undertaken after all else had failed. You conducted your conflicts undercover, by boring from within, by undermining the moral fiber and lowering resistance. So, when your people have lost the ability to fight back, we'll move in quietly and make an asset of you instead of a vicious enemy; ultimately a ruined structure that must be rebuilt completely before it is of any use to us."
"Got it all figured out, haven't you?" sneered Farradyne. "All except a few of us who happen to catch on. Then what—if we don't exactly cotton to the idea?"
There was a yelp from behind him and he turned just in time to intercept Norma. She was advancing on Brenner with her acid-brush poised. "Don't, Norma," he said gently, turning her aside.
"But you said—"