ing
been given insight into what is possible, will go forward instead of
backward?"

"Forward? With such people as the Prime Ministers, the labor and
business leaders, the bosses and the gangsters to cope with? Do you
think they've got spines stiff enough for the job?"

"I'm sure of it. Our world did it with no better. Millions and millions
of other worlds did it. Why can't this one do it? Of course it can."

"May I ask a couple of questions?" This thought came from the tall,
trim, soldierly Chief of Staff.

"Of course, General Cordeen."

"We have all been taking it for granted that you four belong to some
super-human race; some kind or other of _Homo Superior_. Do I understand
correctly your thought that your race is _Homo Sapiens_, the same as
ours?"

"Why, of course it is," Lola answered in surprise. "The only difference
is that we are a few thousand years older than you are."

"You said also that there were 'millions and millions' of worlds that
have solved the problems facing us. Were all these worlds also peopled
by _Homo Sapiens_? It seems incredible."

"True, nevertheless. On any and every world of this type humanity is
identical physically; and the mental differences are due only to their
being in different stages of development. In fact, every planet we have
visited except this one makes a regular custom of breeding its best
blood with the best blood of other solar systems. And as to the
'millions and millions,' I meant only a very large but indefinite
number. As far as I know, not even a rough estimate has ever been
made--has there, Clee?"

"No, but it will probably turn out to be millions _of_ millions, instead
of millions _and_ millions; and squared and then cubed at that. My guess
is that it'll take another ten thousand years of preliminary surveying
such as we're doing, by all the crews the various Galaxian Societies can
put out, before even the roughest kind of an estimate can be made as to
how many planets are inhabited by mutually fertile human peoples."

* * *

For a moment the group was stunned. Then:

"Do you mean to say," asked the merchant prince, "that you Galaxians are
not the only ones who have interstellar travel?"

"Far from it. In fact, yours is the only world we have seen that does
not have it, in one form or another."

"Oh? More than one way? That makes it still worse. Would you be willing
to sell us plans, or lease us ships...?"

"So that yo