that
deal with them, they realized that we weren't any better fighters than
they were; we just had better weapons. To have the same kind of
weapons, they'd have to learn to make them, and once they began
studying technology, they found that they had to study science.
Weapon-making was the entering-wedge; after that, they found that they
could use the same skills to make anything else they wanted. Give them
another century or so and they'll be one of the great races of the
galaxy."

"Yes, and it's a good thing they're our friends, too," Mordkovitz
added. "I'm only sorry there are so few of them, and so many of the
geeks."

"Yes, the Company ought to let us stockpile nuclear weapons here, just
to be on the safe side," another officer, farther down the table,
said.

"Well, I'm not exactly in favor of that," von Schlichten replied.
"It's the same principle as not allowing guards who have to go in
among the convicts to carry firearms. If somebody like Orgzild got
hold of a nuclear bomb, even a little old First-Century H-bomb, he
could use it for a model and construct a hundred like it, with all the
plutonium we've been handing out for power reactors. And there are too
few of us, and we're concentrated in too few places, to last long if
that happened. What this planet needs, though, is a visit by a
fifty-odd-ship task-force of the Space Navy, just to show the geeks
what we have back of us. After a show like that, there'd be a lot less
_znidd suddabit_ around here."

"General, I deplore that sort of talk," Keaveney said. "I hear too
much of this mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber stuff from some of the
junior officers here, without your giving countenance and
encouragement to it. We're here to earn dividends for the stockholders
of the Uller Company, and we can only do that by gaining the
friendship, respect and confidence of the natives...."

"Mr. Keaveney," Paula Quinton spoke up. "I doubt if even you would
seriously accuse the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association of favoring
what you call a mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber policy. We've done
everything in our power to help these people, and if anybody should
have their friendship, we should. Well, only five days ago, in
Konkrook, Mr. Mohammed Ferriera and I were attacked by a mob, our
native aircar driver was murdered, and if it hadn't been for General
von Schlichten and his soldiers, we'd have lost our own lives. Mr.
Ferriera is still hospitalized as a result of injurie