or student."

"And so," Smith said.

"Therefore, it should be obvious that you are not particularly welcome
as a member of this class. Surely you have not chosen to remain, and
even if you have, it should be obvious that you will not be part of any
class of mine until you have successfully passed certain tests, and have
been kept under observation. Need I add that after you have taken these
tests, we will not be expecting you to remain...."

Several students tittered.

"I'm going to talk now, Garnot of Jlob," Smith said. "You asked me
questions earlier. Now I'm going to answer them."

"But I did not...."

"They're questions that should be answered, even though I'm not at all
sure that there's enough free-thought here to grasp the real meaning of
what I'm going to say."

"I did not tell you to talk."

"I'm Smith of Earth, and this is supposedly a free institution. On Earth
I wasn't accustomed to being told when I could talk, when I could
listen, when I could think. You asked me once where Earth is. I'll tell
you."

"But I do not care and...."

"Earth, interstellarly speaking, is a few parsecs from Sirius.
Spaceo-graphically speaking, it isn't very important where it is, not
really. Historically, it was at the apex of civilized culture before
Jlob ever existed except as a steaming carboniferous swamp peopled
largely by a species of amphibian. Socio-psychologically, Earth is a few
aeons ahead of the worlds so badly represented here."

"You have not been told to talk!" screamed Garnot of Jlob.

"But you are supposed to listen," Smith insisted. A gasp sounded through
the room. "You asked what was the first interstellar event of
importance. I'm going to tell you." He turned so that he was looking at
the class. "It wasn't the exodus from the prehistoric Sirian worlds to
the first culture in the Denebian system. Nor was it the Sirian wars.
Those things didn't set the stage for Interstellar history. Interstellar
history had already begun and grown old on the planet Earth, half a
million years before...."

An intensity boiled up through the wick of Smith's body. "The question
itself is shallow, meaningless in an academic sense. It was asked only
to be answered in such a way as to reinforce egotistical concepts of
culture. The most important event in Interstellar history was when men
on the planet Earth developed speech perhaps, or some other event even
long before that ... and started the scientific process that