"That old fool on Sunda, the Emperor, decided that we should blow you up, but by that time I had decided," said His Effulgence, "that you might be useful to me—that is, that we might be useful to each other. I traveled halfway across the Galaxy to meet him, to convince him that it would be sufficient just to quarantine you. When we had used your radio system to teach a few of you the Universal Galactic tongue, and had managed to get what you call the 'planet-buster' down into the largest of your oceans, he figured we had done our job.
"With his usual lack of imagination, he felt sure that we were safe from you—after all, there was no way for you to get off the planet. Even if you could get down to the bottom of the ocean and tamper with the bomb, you would only succeed in setting it off, and that's what the Sunda had been in favor of in the first place.
"But I had different ideas. From what you had already done, I suspected it wouldn't be long before one of you amazing Earthlings would dream up some device or other, head out into space, and show up on our planet. So I've been waiting for you, and here you are."
"It was the thinking of a genius," murmured Ggaran.
"All right, then, genius, here I am," said Crownwall. "So what's the pitch?"
"Ggaran, you explain it to the Earthling," said His Effulgence.
Ggaran bowed. "The crustaceans on Sunda—the lobsterlike creatures that rule the Galaxy—are usurpers. They have no rights to their position of power. Our race is much older than theirs. We were alone when we found the Sundans—a primitive tribe, grubbing in the mud at the edge of their shallow seas, unable even to reason. In those days we were desperately lonely. We needed companionship among the stars, and we helped them develop to the point where, in their inferior way, they were able to reason, almost as well as we, The People, can. And then they cheated us of our rightful place.
"The Emperor at Sunda is one of them. They provide sixty-eight of the hundred Viceroys; we provide only seventeen. It is a preposterous and intolerable situation.
"For more than two million years we have waited for the opportunity for revenge. And now that you have entered space, that opportunity is at hand."