The leader went on. "This sounds too placid to you. We are a different race, remember. It fits our temperaments to a T.
"But there are members of any society whose tastes run counter to the norm of that society; in our case, in our time, it was this nephew of mine and his faction who rebelled. First in dress, as he has said; then by initiating the custom of hunting and killing the lower forms of life for sport, a thing unheard of before they originated it. This was their first serious breach of our laws and customs. From it they went on—talking against the government, decrying traditions, until at last their mania to be different intensified and turned to violence. In short, they mutinied against the established order of things which had made our race a happy one for untold ages. They wished to substitute ways of life which would have torn us apart with dissension and strife."
"We rebelled against complacency, fatheadedness, hidebound slavishness to tradition, and unutterable dullwitted dullness. You can appreciate that, for cripe's sake," said Mac. "Picture the way of life he's given you a briefing on, and tell me you, especially Alan and Brave, wouldn't have rebelled, even if it meant war, to be allowed the right to live your own lives."
Alan and the great Indian looked at each other. The same thought was in both their minds: it sounded as though Mac and his outlaw crew had been in the right.
The leader directed a thought at them. "You must realize that this man, my nephew, was not content to share his views with those who agreed with him. He forced an insurrection on a people who had been thoroughly happy. There was bloodshed in a race that had known none for generations. We overcame him and we might have executed him, but it was repugnant to us. So we gave him space disks and fuel and synthetic food machines and all else he would need, he and the men who had fought for him, and we exiled him to space.
"We knew that somewhere there was a planet which could sustain life. He had a chance of finding it, a small chance, but a chance. As it happens, he did find it."
"After three hundred years of the blackness of the void," said McEldownie. "It was the mercy of God we did. Otherwise we'd have lived out our lives in space. Do you see the cruelty that lurks in these people, which they won't recognize? Killing us would have been kind; but they sent us to wander among the galaxies."
"You may tell them briefly what you did then," the leader ordered him. "Be quick, my time is nearly up."
Mac stood up and walked back and forth, clinking his chained manacles. "We found Earth because our detectors told us the atmosphere was the same as that of our world. It was the only one of its kind we'd come across in all those centuries, centuries of sweeping through sun system after sun system.