"The contact," said the Martian. "It is something we have always had. We don't need it, but we like less the idea of having it arbitrarily taken from us."
"Oh," I said. "I don't suppose you happen to know Baxter's angle in all this? I mean the reason for his urge to destroy you."
"Power," the Martian said simply. "You have heard of the Amnesty, of course?"
"Have I!" I muttered.
"Well, then. You know that the wearer cannot be countermanded by any but the combined veto of the World President and Philip Baxter himself."
"Yes," I said, puzzled.
"Then who, if Philip Baxter were to wear the Amnesty, could countermand him?"
I realized with a shock that no one on the three planets of Earth's domain could, the way the rules were set up.
"But people wouldn't stand for a dictator," I argued. "They'd vote out the power of the Amnesty."
"And if there was no more vote? Jery Delvin, Interplanetary Security is currently the most powerful organization in your world. Its agents possess the most invincible of weapons, the collapser ray-gun. Philip Baxter wields the power, even now. But he desires that it should become known."