ognosis is
War.

Brother.

I know people had wars, I know one reason we do not have them now is
just that with so many planets and cheap transportation, pressure has
other outlets; these people scrapped their ships for factories and
never built more.

But.

There are only about ten million of them and surely to goodness a
whole planet gives room enough to keep out of each other's hair?

Well this is not Reasoning but a Reaction, I go back to the data for
another look.

The root trouble is stated to be that two groups landed on the planet
without knowing the others were there, when they met thirty years
later they got a disagreeable shock.

I cannot see there was any basic difference between them, they were
very similar, especially in that neither lot wanted anything to do
with people they had not picked themselves.

So they divided the planet along a Great Circle which left two of the
main land-masses in one hemisphere and two in another.

They agree each to keep to its own section and leave the other alone.

Twenty years later, trading like mad; each has certain minerals the
other lacks; each has certain agricultural products the other finds it
difficult to grow.

You think this leads to Co-operation Friendship and ultimate
Federation?

I will not go into the incidents that make each side feel it is being
gypped, it is enough that from time to time each has a scarcity or
hold-up on deliveries that upsets the other's economy; and they start
experimenting to become self-sufficient: and the exporter's economy is
upset in turn. And each thinks the other did it on purpose.

This sort of situation reacts internally leading to Politics.

There are troubles about a medium-sized island on the dividing line,
and the profits from interhemispherical transport, and the laws of
interhemispherical trade.

It takes maybe two hundred years, but finally each has expanded the
Police into an army with a whole spectrum of weapons not to be used on
any account except for Defense.

This situation lasts seventy years getting worse all the time, now
Rumors have started on each side that the other is developing an
Ultimate Weapon, and the political parties not in power are agitating
to move first before the thing is complete.

The observers report War not maybe this year or the next but within
ten, and if neither side was looking for an Ultimate Weapon to begin
with they certainly are now.

Taking all this at face valu