concepts wherever we go. We do not touch, even with a fragment
of our minds, that which our machines give us contact with. We do not
travel. We move in space, but we do not travel.

"This is their accusation. And they're right. We are still doing what we
have always done. We are using space flight for the boring, the trivial,
the stupid; using genius for a toy, like a child banging an atomic watch
on the floor. It happened with all our great discoveries and inventions:
the gasoline engine, the telephone, the wireless. We've built
civilizations of monumental stupidity on the wonders of nature. One race
of the Galactics has a phrase they apply to people like us: 'If there is
a God in Heaven He has wept for ten thousand years.'

* * * * *

"But all this is not the worst. A race that is merely stupid seldom gets
out to space. But ours has something else they fear: destructiveness.
They have plotted our history and extrapolated our future. If they let
us come out, war and conflict will follow."

"They can't know that!"

"They say they can. We are in no position to argue."

"So they plan to destroy us--"

"No. They want to try an experiment that has been carried out just a few
times previously. They are going to reduce us from what they term the
critical mass which we have achieved."

"Critical mass? That's a nuclear term."

"Right. Meaning ready to blow up. That's where we are. Two not-so-minor
nuclear wars in fifty years. They see us carrying our destructiveness
into space, fighting each other there, infecting other races with our
hostility. But if we are broken down into smaller groups, have the tools
of war removed, and are forced to take another line of development--well,
they have hopes of salvaging us."

"But they can't do a thing like that to us! What do they intend? Taking
groups of Earthmen, deporting them to other worlds--breaking them apart
from each other forever--?"

The coldness found its resting place in Mel's chest. He stared at James
Connemorra. Then his eyes moved slowly over the walls of the room in the
black ship and out to the stars. The black ship.

"This ship--! You transfer your passengers to this Galactic ship for
deportation to other worlds! But they come back--"

"They are sent to colonies on other worlds where conditions are like
those on Earth--with significant exceptions. The colonies are small,
the largest are only a few thousand. The problems ther