"But you don't have to worry about it, Peter!" Emrys cried. "Listen, the Morethan technology is so alien, so different from ours, because it's based on mental rather than physical forces, that it'll take centuries before they can acquire the techniques they'll need to build the engines. And they'll have trouble getting the materials. We'll both have been long in our graves by the time they'll reach Earth."
"And that makes it all right? It doesn't matter to you what happens to your own home planet once you are dead?"
The young-looking face was flushed. "Why should it? Does Earth care what happens to me? During the plague, they cursed my name because I invented the star-engines. That's the only time Earth remembered me."
"During the plague, men were insane, Jan," Hubbard said, knowing his own sweet reasonableness was ludicrous under the circumstances, "not responsible for what they said. They don't curse your name any more."
"No, they've forgotten it." Emrys looked at Hubbard with blazing, unhuman eyes. "Why should you expect me to put their welfare before my own?"
"You must, if the race is to survive."
Hubbard expected Emrys to say, "Why should it survive?" but apparently there was a grain of emotion left here. "It will survive. The Morethans are not—" the word seemed to stick in Emrys' throat—"monsters."
"Jan," Hubbard said in a monotone, "eleven years ago, after you came to Earth for your inheritance, I became interested in Morethis—naturally enough, I suppose. I started scanning everything I could lay my hands on, and I learned a great deal about it—as much, I believe, as anyone off Morethis knows. Except, of course, you."
Emrys rose and began to pace the floor. "Nobody really knows anything about Morethis. Most of what has been written is a—a pack of lies. One liar copied from another, and so they perpetuate the lie. Scandal has always sold better than truth!"