ion is not exactly like that of an electrical
condenser or of a storage battery, but is more or less analogous to
both. Thus, the energy required to lift you three came from the field,
but the amount was so small that it did not lower the potential of the
field by any measurable amount. Setting this ship down--call it sixty
thousand tons for a thousand miles at one gravity--will increase the
field's potential by approximately one-tenth of one gunt. Have you
studied paraphysics?"

"No."

"It wasn't practical, eh?" Garlock smiled. "Then I can't make even a
stab at explaining instantaneous translation to you. I'll just say that
there is no acceleration involved, no time lapse. There is no violation
of the Law of Conservation since departure and arrival points are
equi-Guntherial. But what I am really interested in is that small group
of high espers you mentioned."

"Yes, I inferred that from Miss Montandon's comments." Entlore fell
silent and Garlock watched his somber thoughts picture Margon Base and
his nation's capital being attacked and destroyed by a fleet of
invincible and invulnerable starships like this _Pleiades_.

"You are wrong, sir," Garlock put in, quietly. "The Galactic Service has
not had, does not and will not have, anything to do with intra-planetary
affairs. We have no connection with, and no responsibility to, any world
or any group of worlds. We are an arm of the United Galaxian Societies
of the Galaxy. Our function is to control space. To forbid, to prevent,
to rectify any interplanetary or interstellar aggression. Above all, to
prevent, by means of procedures up to and including total destruction of
planets if necessary, any attempt whatever to form any multi-world
empire."

The three Nargodians gasped as one, as much at the scope of the thing as
at the calmly cold certainty of ability carried by the thought.

"You are transmitting this precisely, Miss Flurnoy?" Entlore asked.

"Precisely, sir; including background, fringes, connotations, and
implications; just as he is giving it to us."

"Let us assume that your Nargodian government decides to conquer all the
other nations of your planet Margonia. Assume farther that it succeeds.
We will not object; in fact, we will, as a usual thing, not even be
informed of it. If then, however, your government decides that one world
is not enough for it to rule and prepares to conquer, or take aggressive
action against, any other world, we will be informed