"I thought perhaps we—or our representatives might someday—"
"Appear before it? I'm afraid not. I fear you are treading the path of those who once inhabited your neighbor planet, Mars."
"Then life does exist—or did—on Mars?"
"Oh yes, but we were forced to eliminate it."
The President spoke calmly. "Then you are able to depopulate whole planets?"
"Whole systems if necessary. Let me explain. When conditions are right, life inevitably comes into existence upon a planet. The entities involved are always pretty much as you and I, physically, because conditions produce a ruling race of our structure or do not produce life at all.
"The problem, Mr. President, lies in the spiritual. Every race on every inhabited planet is given the intelligence and desire to evolve upward spiritually but they do not always succeed. A time limit is set on this so that the inhabitants of each planet arrive finally at an evolutionary crisis."
The President thought of nuclear fission, the atom bomb, mankind's incredible progress over the last two hundred years. "And you have come to aid us in spiritual development?"
"On the contrary. You have had all the guidance necessary—far more than those on most planets—more than did your neighbors on Mars. I have come to annihilate you."
The President hid his shock well. "If killing me will—"