"He permits them to exist?"
"He encourages them to exist," the Son replied. "He stimulates them."
"How?"
"By sending us to fight with them."
"But that destroys them."
"Only some of them. And that stimulates those who survive. Also, it rids their stock of those unfit to multiply."
"An admirable arrangement," said O'Hara. "As you say, the Father thinks of everything. I am beginning to want to meet him."
"You will," the Son said. "You will meet him soon."
They were coming out now into the thickly forested valley that opened eastward toward a rolling plain, then abruptly, sheered off, either by blast or fire, the forest ceased, and before them lay one of those vast and multi-hued farms of pipes which O'Hara had seen earlier from the air. Each section of pipe was roughly four feet in diameter, its surface slick and with a temperature that O'Hara by touch estimated at eighty degrees, the ends joined as he had observed so that it was in fact an endless coil, extending for miles.
"You must climb over these," the Son explained.