"Everything you guys say sounds crazy. Let's start all over
again."

Brett-James said, "Let me do it, Lawrence." He turned his eyes to Joe.
"Mr. Prantera, in your own era, did you ever consider the future?"

Joe looked at him blankly.

"In your day you were confronted with national and international,
problems. Just as we are today and just as nations were a century or a
millennium ago."

"Sure, O.K., so we had problems. I know whatcha mean--like wars, and
depressions and dictators and like that."

"Yes, like that," Brett-James nodded.

The heavy-set man paused a moment. "Yes, like that," he repeated. "That
we confront you now indicates that the problems of your day were solved.
Hadn't they been, the world most surely would have destroyed itself.
Wars? Our pedagogues are hard put to convince their students that such
ever existed. More than a century and a half ago our society eliminated
the reasons for international conflict. For that matter," he added
musingly, "we eliminated most international boundaries. Depressions?
Shortly after your own period, man awoke to the fact that he had
achieved to the point where it was possible to produce an abundance for
all with a minimum of toil. Overnight, for all practical purposes, the
whole world was industrialized, automated. The second industrial
revolution was accompanied by revolutionary changes in almost every
field, certainly in every science. Dictators? Your ancestors found, Mr.
Prantera, that it is difficult for a man to be free so long as others
are still enslaved. Today the democratic ethic has reached a pinnacle
never dreamed of in your own era."

"O.K., O.K.," Joe Prantera growled. "So everybody's got it made. What I
wanta know is what's all this about me giving it ta somebody? If
everything's so great, how come you want me to knock this guy off?"

Reston-Farrell bent forward and thumped his right index finger twice on
the table. "The bacterium of hate--a new strain--has found the human
race unprotected from its disease. We had thought our vaccines immunized
us."

"What's that suppose to mean?"

Brett-James took up the ball again. "Mr. Prantera, have you ever heard
of Ghengis Khan, of Tamerlane, Alexander, Caesar?"

Joe Prantera scowled at him emptily.

"Or, more likely, of Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin?"

"Sure I heard of Hitler and Stalin," Joe growled. "I ain't stupid."

The other nodded. "Such men are unique. They have a drive ... a drive to
power which