* * *

He stood in the open airlock, the Varn against the farther wall where he
had ordered it to stand. Throon was in the radiation chamber and he had
held his first intelligible conversation with the natives that day.

The Varn was facing into the red-black gloom outside the lighted
airlock, where the departing natives could be heard crossing the glade.
"_Their thoughts no longer hold fear and suspicion_," it said. "_The
misunderstanding is ended._"

He raised the muzzle of the blaster in his hand. The black head lifted
and the golden eyes looked up at him.

"I made you no promise," he said.

"_I could demand none._"

"I can't stop to take you back to your own world and I can't leave you
alive on this one--with what you've learned from my mind you would have
the natives build the Varn a disintegrator-equipped space fleet equal to
our own ships."

"_We want only to go with you._"

He told it what he wanted it to know before he killed it, wondering why
he should care:

"I would like to believe you are sincere--and you know why I don't dare
to. Trusting a telepathic race would be too dangerous. The Varn would
know everything we knew and only the Varn would be able to communicate
with each new alien race. We would have to believe what the Varn told
us--we would have to trust the Varn to see for us and speak for us and
not deceive us as we went across the galaxy. And then, in the end,
Terrans would no longer be needed except as a subject race. They would
be enslaved.

"We would have laid the groundwork for an empire--the Varn Empire."

There was a silence, in which his words hung like something cold and
invisible between them.

Then the Varn asked, very quietly:

"_Why is the Plan failing?_"

"You already know," he said. "Because of the barrier--the communication
barrier that causes aliens to misunderstand the intentions of
Exploration men and fear them."

"_There is no communication barrier between you and I--yet you fear me
and are going to kill me._"

"I have to kill you. You represent a danger to my race."

"_Isn't that the same reason why aliens kill Exploration men?_"

He did not answer and its thought came, quickly, "_How does an
Exploration man appear to the natives of alien worlds?_"

How did he appear?... He landed on their world in a ship that could
smash it into oblivion; he stepped out of his ship carrying weapons that
could level a city; he represented irresistible powe