Trehearne saw that sink home. The Vardda Council, being human, could not worry too deeply for long about a future they wouldn't see.
"And furthermore," Joris bellowed, "when every half-baked folk in the Galaxy does take to starflight, does that mean the great Vardda trade is ruined forever? Listen! We Vardda were the first to go out to the stars. The first! Do you think all the lubberly races of the Galaxy can compete with us out there? Do you think so?"
He caught them with that, with the Vardda pride, the Vardda glory. Trehearne saw the strained faces changing. Not all of them, but many.
Joris paused before he said his final word. "Do you think there will ever be a time when we Vardda can't hold our own?"
There was not much talk after that. There were questions, protests, doubts, but little more argument. All the arguments had been spoken.
"We have to decide this now or never," Ristin told them. "If we delay longer, there will not be a choice."
Trehearne heard the resolution read, and the voting and the result. Not easily could the Vardda yield! Forty-three voted against the resolution. But seventy-nine for it.
Ristin said, "It will be announced by general broadcast tonight that, in view of the advance of civilization on many star-worlds, the Vardda deem the time ripe to share the secret of mutation with other selected races."
Quorn said, "It's done. Trehearne, it's done."
Trehearne still could not quite grasp that that simple statement marked a change forever in the Galaxy, that with it all human races began the great change toward Galactic Man.