"Nonsense! Sscantoo will reap the benefits of a Galaxy-wide culture.
Sscantoo will reap the benefits created by Terra, and without the
battle scars that Terra will bear forever. Fight them, and you will
die. There is little sense in being dead, Linzete. Never again will the
Loard-vogh conquer and enslave. From now on in, they will find their
selected victims prepared and allying with them, offering them facts
and facets of culture, and sponsored by Terra. Terrans are already high
in the councils of the Loard-vogh as technical advisors. They calculate
and they advise, and they will advise terms for this system and for
that system, and the end-product will be to weld the entire Galaxy into
one solid culture.
"Fight them?" laughed Billy. "Why fight them when we can outmaneuver
them before the logisticians can cover their first page of trial
equations."
"Trouble is," said Linzete, "that Sscantovians are a rather belligerent
race, and entirely individualistic. And the Loard-vogh are extreme
militarists."
"Sscantoo's job is clear. Sscantovians like isolation and lone-wolfing.
That's why I am here pleading with you." Billy pointed out of the
overhead dome into the bright sky. "Out there, somewhere, there must be
another culture that really needs extermination. More than half of the
Galaxy lies out there. Linzete, take your lifetime and your planet's
resources and go out and find for me a whipping post to keep the
Loard-vogh in fighting trim. It's precious little warfare they'll get
at home from now on in."
Linzete purred. "You seem to have solved our problem and theirs all in
one plan. Terran, it is a deal."
"Sscantoo will not be sorry," promised Billy.
Linzete nodded, and poured a drink from the carafe at his elbow. "To
a united Galaxy," he said. They drank. "Tell me, Billy, what happens
when you meet a race that will not listen to reason, having planetary
defenses too powerful to attack?"
"We have a means of rotating a five thousand mile sphere of their
sun's core into subspace. It makes a violent variable out of it, and
forces the race to migrate within a year. During migration, of course,
they are helpless and they can be handled with ease."
"Um," swallowed Linzete. "I see."
The color of his face showed that he did see.
* * * * *
Once more the months rolled past. The trip was made to Terra in
subspace, to save time, but when Billy arrived, his greeting to
Patricia Kennebec was hungry and demanding.
"You'd think it were months," she objected mildly.
"For me it has been," he confessed.
Another month rolled by, and it went with a peculiar time-sense, for
it was both violently swift at times, and at other times it dragged
like eternity. Both of them would have preferred a quick wedding, but
position interfered with the process. But the month ended eventually,
and after a solid round of formal affairs punctuated by less formal
details, they got the right and the opportunity to take to their
spaceship together.
And the four months that followed drove past as swiftly as the
light-years logged up on the recorder. Theirs was an ambling passage
through prime space; they stopped at four or five intervening systems
on their way.
Their arrival at Vorgan's capitol followed the visits from Indan Ko and
Linzete. Billy knew, and smiled inwardly. He'd planned it that way.
"Stick around," he told her with a grin. "Females are strictly nom de
something-or-other in there at present. I'll be out directly."
He entered and saluted Vorgan. Lindoo was less affable than the Lord of
All, who smiled.
"A nice piece of work, Terran," said Vorgan.
"Thank you."
Vorgan turned to Lindoo. "You once told me that you would step down
when your master at diplomacy came along," he twitted.
Billy smiled at Lindoo. "I gather that I executed your wishes to
perfection," he said.
Lindoo blinked.