Buster scurried back and forth across the table top, tiny feet beating out a frenzied minor patter.
“There is no use in arguing,” Elmer said. “This talk of Earthmen co-operating with the Martians is impossible. It would never work. They’d be at one another’s throats before they were acquainted. You, Lathrop, killed the Martian out in space. There was no provocation. You simply murdered him.”
“He got in my hair,” said Lathrop. “He’d been in it for almost twenty years.”
“That’s what I mean,” said Elmer. “If the two races could get along, they’d be unbeatable. But they couldn’t get along. They’d grate on one another’s nerves. You have no idea the gulf that separates them — not so much the gulf of knowledge, for that could be bridged, nor a lack of co-operation, for the Martians know that as well as the race of Earth, but temperamentally they would be poles apart.”
Carter nodded, understandingly: “They’d be old fossils and we’d be young squirts.”
“But we could work at long range,” insisted Lathrop. “They could stay in their subatomic world, we could stay where we are. Elmer could act as the go-between.”
“Impossible,” Carter argued. “There is the time angle to consider. A few days for us must be a generation for them. Everything would be speeded up in their world — even the rate of living. The time factor would be basically different. We could not co-ordinate our effort.”
“I see,” said Lathrop, He tapped his fingers on the table top. Buster scurried to the other side, as far as he could get from the tapping fingers.
Lathrop shot a quick glance at Elmer. “Where does that leave us?”
“Just where we started,” Elmer said. “You’ve made Buster useless to me, but that is of little matter. Another robot can be sent me.”