Kim nodded in an odd grim satisfaction.
"We'll set up matter-transmitters," he suggested. "Then there'll be complete and continuous communication with this planet from the start."
"Right," said the man with the bearskin hat. He added candidly: "We've brains on Ades, my friend. We've got every technical device the rest of the Galaxy has, except the Disciplinary Circuit, and we won't allow that! If this is a scheme of some damned despot to add another planet to his empire, it won't work. There are three empires already started, you know, all taken by matter-transmitter. But that won't work here!"
"If you build the transmitters yourselves, you'll know there's nothing tricky about the circuits," Kim said. "My offer is to take a transmitter and an exploring party to the next nearest galaxy and pick out a planet there to start on. Ades isn't ideal."
"No," agreed the man with the bearskin hat. "It's too cold, and we're overcrowded. There are twenty million of us and more keep coming out of the transmitter every day. The Galaxy seems to be combing out all its brains and sending them all here. We're short of minerals, though—metals, especially. So we'll pick some good sound planets to start on over in a second galaxy. Hm! Come to the communicator and we'll talk to the other men we need to reach."
They went out of the small building which was the center of government of the quite small city. There was nothing impressive about it, anywhere. It was not even systematically planned. Each citizen, it appeared, had built as he chose. Each seemed to dress as he pleased, too.
To Kim and to Dona there was a startling novelty in the faces they saw about them. On Alphin III almost everybody had looked alike. At any rate their faces had worn the same expression of bovine contentment.
On other planets contentment had not been the prevailing sentiment. On some, despair had seemed to be universal.
But these people, these criminals, were individuals. Their manner was not the elaborate, cringing politeness of Alphin III. It was free and natural.
The communicator-station was rough and ready. It was not a work of art, but a building put up by people who needed a building and built one for that purpose only. The vision-screens lighted up one by one and faces appeared, as variegated as the costumes beneath them. They had a common look for aliveness which was heartening to Kim.