Linzete shrugged. "Win, lose, or draw, Sscantoo seems doomed."
"Nonsense! Sscantoo will reap the benefits of a Galaxy-wide culture. Sscantoo will reap the benefits created by Terra, and without the battle scars that Terra will bear forever. Fight them, and you will die. There is little sense in being dead, Linzete. Never again will the Loard-vogh conquer and enslave. From now on in, they will find their selected victims prepared and allying with them, offering them facts and facets of culture, and sponsored by Terra. Terrans are already high in the councils of the Loard-vogh as technical advisors. They calculate and they advise, and they will advise terms for this system and for that system, and the end-product will be to weld the entire Galaxy into one solid culture.
"Fight them?" laughed Billy. "Why fight them when we can outmaneuver them before the logisticians can cover their first page of trial equations."
"Trouble is," said Linzete, "that Sscantovians are a rather belligerent race, and entirely individualistic. And the Loard-vogh are extreme militarists."
"Sscantoo's job is clear. Sscantovians like isolation and lone-wolfing. That's why I am here pleading with you." Billy pointed out of the overhead dome into the bright sky. "Out there, somewhere, there must be another culture that really needs extermination. More than half of the Galaxy lies out there. Linzete, take your lifetime and your planet's resources and go out and find for me a whipping post to keep the Loard-vogh in fighting trim. It's precious little warfare they'll get at home from now on in."
Linzete purred. "You seem to have solved our problem and theirs all in one plan. Terran, it is a deal."
"Sscantoo will not be sorry," promised Billy.
Linzete nodded, and poured a drink from the carafe at his elbow. "To a united Galaxy," he said. They drank. "Tell me, Billy, what happens when you meet a race that will not listen to reason, having planetary defenses too powerful to attack?"
"We have a means of rotating a five thousand mile sphere of their sun's core into subspace. It makes a violent variable out of it, and forces the race to migrate within a year. During migration, of course, they are helpless and they can be handled with ease."
"Um," swallowed Linzete. "I see."