"Hotang Lu left three days ago because he was withdrawn. His statement was that Indan Ko was taking the trip to Vorgan's capitol in order to offer terms of surrender. Explain that!"
"Indan Ko was intelligent enough to understand the implications behind fighting. Look, Linzete, I sold Tlembo a theory of operations. You cannot hope to win alone."
"We can exterminate them."
"And in doing so, render unfit for life a quarter of the Galaxy? That I will not permit. And, Linzete, any extermination you perform will be strictly post-mortem. Granted that you have the ships and the men and the spores all grown or collected and packed into bombs. From a single bombing of a Loard-vogh planet to extermination of life on that planet will be a matter of six months to a year. Meanwhile, the Loard-vogh will have attacked and conquered you. Think Terra didn't think of it? We did and we considered it well. But Linzete, we like to remain alive. We destroyed seventeen million of the first-line fighting men. That was war, and the men were expendable. A nice nasty term. Terra lost seven thousand because Terra does not consider any man really expendable. The situation is about even. But consider their utter hatred and violence to find a single planet bombed into lifelessness ever afterwards by filling it with sheer death-rot."
"I see the point, but if we're to lose, let's lose honorably, die fighting, and take as many with us as we can."
"A poor attitude. You must fight to win and to live, Linzete. War is a means of forcing your will upon an enemy, Linzete. That means there are a number of different kinds of war. War per se is usually the last resort. There are social wars and economic wars, and people do not consider them too violent. But a shooting war gets everybody all worked up.
"There has been a lot of talk about Terra's secret weapon, Linzete. It has been explained again and again. Terra's secret weapon is the intelligence to recognize fact, even though obscured. If you had your choice, Linzete, which would you rather be, the nominal ruler of a sector or the man whose advice is taken on every decision—who, in fact, tells the ruler what to do?"
"Lacking the right to be both acknowledged ruler and factual ruler, I— That is a problem that has never occurred to me."
Billy said, very patiently, "Terra knows. Terra will win this war. Our will—to be imposed upon the Loard-vogh—is that they take their decisions from our advice. As such, we have the rule of the Galaxy. I tell you this because Sscantoo has too much to gain by absolute co-operation with Terra. Eventually the Loard-vogh will be seeking our advice. I have sent them Indan Ko, the ruler of a race that has caused them no end of trouble. Indan Ko will not arrive there for months, yet I can predict that Vorgan and Lindoo will place the Tlembans directly under Terran supervision for divers reasons, not the least of which is the fact that Vorgan will prefer to place under Terra any intelligent race who are more than conquered slaves. Allies, in a sense. That's because the Loard-vogh have never yet experienced any allying. Their past is devoid of practice. So it will be with Sscantoo. You will come under our jurisdiction."