Faren Twill grunted sourly, "Ever try to interfere with a dog and her pups? You get bitten whether you mean good or ill. If you care for my opinion you'll ... Or do you give a damn?"
"Go ahead."
"I say we just slide in there quietly and collect the lifeships. Then, later, we can go in boldly and establish our superior position."
Regin Naylo shook his head superciliously. "I say we should hit 'em with all we've got and establish our physical superiority. Look, Faren, either way this gang of subhumans is going to end up in some form of servitude to us. Let's make it the quick and dirty way and save manpower. Besides, what can they possibly have that we want?"
Twill shrugged. "Any subject race is a good market."
Naylo laughed. "I'd rather shove it down their throats by taxation. Then we'd collect without having to give them a string of uranium beads for exchange."
Faren Twill asked Viggon Sarri for his opinion.
Viggon said, without changing expression, "There are races that will not abide the idea of collaboration, and there are races that either revolt or die under any superior government. It has been my lifework to expand the Bradian culture, one way and another, across the galaxy. When we finish with this problem here, another world—in this case another series of colonized worlds—will enter one of the forms of economic relationships with Brade. Whether we blast in and smash them, or ooze in and coerce them quietly; take them over, or hail them as an ally."
"Ally?" roared Regin Naylo scornfully. "This bunch of primitives who haven't even got an infrawave detector?"
"Ally?" snarled Faren Twill disgustedly. "This people who cannot protect their spacecraft from warp failure?"