"You believe there are two?"
Tom Barden nodded. "Uh-huh," he said. "And all the talking we can do from now until we find out won't help because we cannot interpret the thoughts of an alien culture in our own terms and hope to come out right!"
And that, of course, was that. It was definitely true. Reviewing all the evidence during the next ten days, they came up with a startlingly minute amount of fact. Barden had been given a scientific field because of a political argument; Edith Ward had been warned that the information was incomplete and would lead to disaster.
Build upon those slender bricks and they tumble all too quickly. Barden's story could be construed as an attempt to get consulting service on a dangerous project without danger to the alien race. Ward's informant might have been an attempt to give Sol a good chance to solve it in safety, but in solution there would be no proof—or even in failure. For there was no way of telling proof from failure at many light-years of distance unless the failure bloomed the entire system into a nova.
And regardless of any theoretical argument, it was still a technical impossibility to construct any spaceship capable of traversing light-years without some means of super speed. Not without a suitable crew to do a job when it arrived.
Then, to reverse the argument, supposing that Barden's tale was correct. The opposing faction might hope to forestall any work by issuing the warning.
But if Barden's tale were correct, why did the so-called altruists offer him a science that was dangerous to pursue?
Unless, perhaps, the political argument was conquest versus dominance. Both factions wanted conquest and dominance. One demanded the elimination of all races that might offer trouble. The other faction might argue that a completely dead enemy offers no real reward for conquest—for of what use is it to become king when the throne is safe only when all subjects are dead?
Yes, there's Paranoia. The paranoid will either become king of all or king of none—or none will remain to be king including himself. That theory is quite hard on rational people.