He snapped the switch which connected him with the office of Security Officer Ten-Quoth and said:
"Have the chains taken from the Terrans and see that they are given comfortable and unguarded quarters. Tell them they have been pardoned by the Supreme Executive and that they are free to leave Tharnar whenever they wish."
It was mid-morning of the next day, bright and warm with a few fleecy white clouds drifting across the blue sky. Tal-Karanth stood before the window again, Vor-Dergal beside him, and watched the City come to life; slowly and leisurely, as it had come to life each mid-morning for the past fifty thousand years.
Vor-Dergal looked toward The Cat, where the boarding ramps had already been withdrawn and the airlocks closed.
"They're ready to go," he said. "I hope you haven't made a mistake in what you did. The other Terrans will learn of us now, and when they come...." He let the sentence trail off, unfinished.
"We have a great deal to gain by the coming of the Terrans," Tal-Karanth said, "and little to lose."
"Little to lose?" Vor-Dergal asked. "We have Tharnar and the City to lose; we have our lives and our civilization to lose."
"Yes, our civilization," Tal-Karanth said. "Our god that we worshipped—our civilization. Look, Vor—listen to what I have to say:
"I did some thinking the night the Terrans were waiting to be executed. I'm afraid it was probably one of the few times for thousands of years that a Tharnarian ever tried to critically examine the Tharnarian way of life. I started from the beginning, more than fifty thousand years ago, when the interstellar ships of Tharnar were actually interstellar and were manned by men instead of robots.