dden insight,
"when the job was finally done."

* * * * *

Wandering through the museum, they came at last to a room filled with
small hand tools.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like them," said Garth.

"Those are weapons," answered The Visitor. "They are missile-throwing
short-range weapons, and they are in tip-top working order. You just
have to point the end with the hole in it at anything you want to
kill, and pull that little lever there on the bottom. And quite a mess
of things they can make, too, let me tell you."

"They seem very inefficient to me," said Garth wonderingly, and then
stopped in confusion. "I beg your pardon, my Lord," he said, "I didn't
mean to criticize anything; it just seems to me that they would damage
a lot of the food they killed."

"That's true enough, my boy, true enough," said The Visitor. "Your
criticism has a lot of point to it. But, you see, they were never
designed mainly to kill for food, but to make it easy for one human to
shoot another."

"Why would anyone want to do that?"

"Your civilization is a very unusual one," answered The Visitor. "It
is planetwide and has developed without a single war or major
conflict. This is due entirely to the fact that I've been here to help
and teach you. Most civilizations develop only as the result of
struggle and bloodshed, with people killing people by the thousands
and millions. I could have raised your people to the technological
level where they are now in a few hundred years, if I hadn't worried
about killing. To do it the way it has been done--so that you can't
imagine why one human should kill another--has taken most of the time.

"It is only recently, as a matter of fact, that my work has been
complete. Your civilization can now stand alone; my help is no longer
necessary. It's gotten to the point now where my continued hanging
around here is likely to do harm, if I'm not mighty careful. In all
your problems, you'll always feel that you've got me to fall back on
if you get into trouble, and that's not good."

"What do you plan to do, then?"

"There's not much I can do by myself. I long for my own destruction
more than anything else, except maybe to go back home to Earth. I'm
lonely and tired and old. But I can't die and I can't destroy myself
any more than you could turn one of those weapons against your own
head and pull the trigger. We're just not made that way, either one of