Trigger's face clouded a little. "Yes," she said. She sat silent for a moment. "Well, I got that from Repulsive somewhere along the line," she said then. "It didn't really come clear until some time after we'd got back. But it was there in those pictures in the interview."
"The giants stamping on the farm?"
Trigger nodded. "And the fast clock and the slow one. He was trying to tell it then. The Jesters—that's the giants—they're fast and tough like us. Apparently," Trigger said thoughtfully, "they're a good deal like us in a lot of ways. But worse. Much worse! And the Old Galactics were just slow. They thought slow; they moved slow—they did almost everything slow. At full gallop, old Repulsive couldn't have kept up with a healthy snail. Besides, they just liked to grow things and tinker with things and so on. They didn't go in for fighting, and they never got to be at all good at it. So they just got wiped out, practically."
"The Jesters were good at fighting, eh?"
Trigger nodded. "Very good. Like us, again."
"Where did they come from?"
"Repulsive thought they were outsiders. He wasn't sure. He and that other O.G. were on the sidelines, running their protein collecting station, when the Jesters arrived; and it was all over and they were gone before he had learned much about it."
"From outside the galaxy!" Pilch said thoughtfully. She cleared her throat. "What's this business about they might be back again?"
"Well," Trigger said, "he thought they might be. Just might. Actually he believed the Jesters got wiped out too."
"Eh?" Pilch said. "How's that?"