Smith looked blank. "I don't get that."
"Don't you? Look here: you'll admit that success begets success, won't you?"
"Success begets success? Sure! 'Nothing succeeds like success.'"
"Well, isn't that merely another way of saying that the consciousness of superiority will lead to further conquests? We humans are thoroughly conscious of our supremacy; if we weren't we'd never attempt the things we do!"
Van Emmon saw the point. "In other words, the humans on the earth never BEGAN to show their superiority until something—something big, happened to demonstrate their ability!"
"Exactly!" cried Kinney. "Our prehistoric ancestors would never have handed down such a tremendous ambition to you and me if they, at that time, had not been able to point to some definite feat and say, 'That proves I'm a bigger man than a horse,' for example."
"Of course," reflected Billie, aloud; "of course, there were other factors."
"Yes; but they don't alter the case. Originally the human was only slightly different from the apes he associated with. There was perhaps only one slight point of superiority; today there are millions of such points. Man is infinitely superior, now, and it's all because he was slightly superior, then."
"Suppose we grant that," remarked the geologist. "What then? Does that explain why the bees have made good on Sanus?"
"To a large degree. Some time in the past the Sanusian bee discovered that he possessed a certain power which enabled him to force his will upon other creatures. This power was his poisonous sting. He found that, when he got his fellows together and formed a swarm, they could attack any animal in such large numbers as to make it helpless."