? We've finally cracked open the atom!"

"Sure we have. We had a clue, didn't we? Radium and uranium. Do you
think we'd ever have learned how without those elements? We'd never even
have suspected that atomic energy existed!"

"Well? Haven't they--?"

"No, they haven't. You've told me yourself that Mars has only 73 percent
of the earth's density. Even a chemist can see that that means a lack of
heavy metals--no osmium, no uranium, no radium. They didn't have the
clue."

"Even so, that doesn't prove they're more advanced than we are. If they
were _more_ advanced, they'd have discovered it anyway."

"Maybe," conceded Jarvis. "I'm not claiming that we don't surpass them
in some ways. But in others, they're far ahead of us."

"In what, for instance?"

"Well--socially, for one thing."

"Huh? How do you mean?"

Jarvis glanced in turn at each of the three that faced him. He
hesitated. "I wonder how you chaps will take this," he muttered.
"Naturally, everybody likes his own system best." He frowned. "Look
here--on the earth we have three types of society, haven't we? And
there's a member of each type right here. Putz lives under a
dictatorship--an autocracy. Leroy's a citizen of the Sixth Commune in
France. Harrison and I are Americans, members of a democracy. There you
are--autocracy, democracy, communism--the three types of terrestrial
societies. Tweel's people have a different system from any of us."

"Different? What is it?"

"The one no earthly nation has tried. Anarchy!"

"Anarchy!" the captain and Putz burst out together.

"That's right."

"But--" Harrison was sputtering. "What do you mean--they're ahead of us?
Anarchy! Bah!"

"All right--bah!" retorted Jarvis. "I'm not saying it would work for us,
or for any race of men. But it works for them."

"But--anarchy!" The captain was indignant.

"Well, when you come right down to it," argued Jarvis defensively,
"anarchy is the ideal form of government, if it works. Emerson said that
the best government was that which governs least, and so did Wendell
Phillips, and I think George Washington. And you can't have any form of
government which governs less than anarchy, which is no government at
all!"

The captain was sputtering. "But--it's unnatural! Even savage tribes
have their chiefs! Even a pack of wolves has its leader!"

"Well," retorted Jarvis defiantly, "that only proves that government is
a primitive device, doesn't it? With a perfect race you woul