im. He shrugged mentally. He'd have to ask him, at some later
date, whether he'd missed anything. Undoubtedly, there'd be a spare
recording of the tape he himself was making.

"To begin: As you know, our government is founded upon principles of
extreme personal freedom. There are no arbitrary laws governing
expression, worship, the possession of personal weapons, or the rights
of personal property. The state is construed to be a mechanism of public
service, operated by the Body Politic, and the actual regulation and
regimentation of society is accomplished by natural socio-economic laws
which, of course, are both universal and unavoidable.

"We pride ourselves on the high status of the individual in comparison
to the barely-tolerable existence of the state. We do, naturally, have
ordinances and injunctions governing crimes, but even these are usually
superseded by civil action at the personal level."

Marlowe leaned forward a trifle. "Forgetting exact principles for a
moment, ud Klavan, you realize that the actuality will sometimes stray
from the ideal. Our citizens, for example, do not habitually carry
weapons except under extraordinary conditions. But that is a civil
taboo, rather than a fixed amendation of our constitution. I have no
doubt that some future generation, mores having shifted, will, for
example, revive the _code duello_."

Ud Klavan nodded. "Quite understood, thank you, Marlowe."

* * * * *

"Good. Now, to proceed:

"Under conditions such as those, the state and its agencies _cannot_ lay
down a fixed policy of any sort, and expect it to be in the least
permanent. The people will not tolerate such regulation, and with each
new shift in social mores--and the institution of any policy is itself
sufficient to produce such a shift within a short time--successive
policies are repudiated by the Body Politic, and new ones must be
instituted."

Marlowe leaned back and spread his hands. "Therefore," he said with a
rueful smile, "it can fairly be said that we _have_ no foreign policy,
effectively speaking. We pursue the expedient, ud Klavan, and hope for
the best. The case which Mr. Mead and I are currently considering is
typical.

"The Union, as you know, maintains a General Survey Corps whose task it
is to map the galaxy, surveying such planets as harbor alien races or
seem suitable for human colonization. Such a survey team, for example,
first established contact between