"Suppose, next, our crook holds the President of the United States for ransom. Since he doesn't need money, the ransom price might be laws which would grant him impunity for his crimes. If not, he could have an accomplice reposit him out of jail, or even out of the electric chair, before the switch was pulled."
"That's enough! I get the idea!" Jerry exclaimed.
"Wait—there's a more important point. Suppose a government you consider the wrong government got hold of some of the machines. First, of course, they'd reposit the world stockpile of atomic bombs. Then they'd reposit disease bacteria into the bloodstreams of U.N. troops, officials, and civilian workers, and reposit all the ammunition out of U.N. guns. So long as there is one spark of nationalism left on Earth, so long as any country has an economic and political system they consider better than some other system, Matter Repositors would mean planetary self-destruction. Now do you see why I was blunt and unqualified?"
"I do," Jerry said solemnly, "And I was a fool to fly off the handle when you called us savages. We are savages, I can see that now. And your people must be pretty damned godlike to be trusted with such an invention!"
"Not at all. To a Micronesian bushman, the pilot who can be trusted with the power and speed of a B-29 seems a veritable god. But the pilot is only an ordinary Joe, very likely no more intelligent than the bushman—he just had a different background. Fighting each other for necessities and luxuries, the process that you people call business competition, has so long been needless to our people that they would no more think of competitive gain than you would do an Indian harvest dance before you signed a contract. They aren't necessarily more intelligent or more virtuous than your people—they just have a different background."
"You seem to have devoted a lot of study to the larceny in the Earthman's soul," Jerry put in. "What if we stole the secret from you, whether you think it wise to give it to us or not? Suppose somebody swiped the blueprints, or copied a Repositor you brought with you for your own use?"
The Ambassador smiled. "You might try to steal it. That's why I didn't bring a Repositor with me, to save you people the trouble of a futile try."
"Why futile?"
"Well, the Matter Repositor is a simple device. Any child on the Federated Planets who had an education, say, equivalent to your technical high school education, could build a working model, even without another Repositor to assist him. But Earth's best technicians couldn't build one, even with either blueprints or a model to copy."
"They couldn't, eh?" Jerry challenged, bristling again. "They managed to split atoms, transmute elements, do a few little tricks like that."