made
up their minds. He had to have their verbal confirmation.

Informally, he thrust his hands in his pockets and sauntered to the
front of the group.

"I have been asked to call a meeting," he said, "by certain members of
the group who have something on their minds. They seem to feel we'd all
be interested in what is troubling them. Since I have nothing in
particular to say I'm simply going to turn the floor over to those of
you who have. Dr. Silvers first approached me to call this discussion,
so I shall ask him to lead off. Will you come to the front, Dr.
Silvers?"

The mathematician rose as if wishing someone else would do the talking.
He stood at one side of the group, halfway to the rear. "I can do all
right from here," he said.

After a pause, as if coming to a momentous decision, he plunged into his
complaint. "It appears that nearly all of us have encountered an aspect
of the Ryke culture and character which was not anticipated when we
first received their offer." Briefly, he related the details of the Ryke
rejection of his research on the Legrandian Equations.

"We were told we were going to have all our questions answered, that the
Ryke's science included all we could anticipate or hope to accomplish in
the next few millenia. I swallowed that. We all did. It appears we were
slightly in error. It begins to appear as if we are not going to find
the intellectual paradise we anticipated."

He smiled wryly. "I'm sure none of you is more ready than I to admit he
has been a fool. It appears that paradise, so-called, consists merely of
a few selected gems which the Rykes consider particularly valuable,
while the rest of the field goes untouched.

"I want to offer public apologies to Dr. Hockley, who saw and understood
the situation as it actually existed, while the rest of us had our heads
in the clouds. Exactly how he knew, I'm not sure, but he did, and very
brilliantly chose the only way possible to convince us that what he knew
was correct.

"I suggest we do our packing tonight, gentlemen. Let us return at once
to our laboratories and spend the rest of our lives in some degree of
atonement for being such fools as to fall for the line the Rykes tried
to sell us."

Hockley's eyes were on the senators. At first there were white faces
filled with incredulity as the mathematician proceeded. Then slowly this
changed to sheer horror.

When Silvers finished, there was immediate bedlam. There was a clamor of