Norma shook her head coolly. "That's emotion, Charles. I don't know
exactly what their purpose is, but I do understand that this is a
conflict for eventual survival, and for the rule of an economic empire."
"But--"
Norma shook her head slowly. "Put the shoe on the other foot, Charles.
Suppose you and your kind had come upon these people--how would you see
them?"
"As possible allies and friends, and--"
"Balderdash. You'd have seen them as possible customers, and people to
be exploited, and maybe enemies after you knew their history. Their
attitude is as arrogant as ours, and their personal justification is
as high. By some lucky break they got to interstellar travel before we
did and so they automatically place us in an inferior position; but
they know that this doesn't make us a push-over. We are scientifically
capable of discovering their interstellar drive at any moment, and why
we haven't is probably just a matter of our not combining the right
sciences. Our knowledge of medicine is far wider than theirs, for
instance."
"How can you know this?" he asked.
* * * * *
Norma slipped open a few buttons at her throat and slipped her dress
down from one shoulder. There was a tiny circular white bandage stuck
to one spot. "They took a sample of me," she said, "because I seem
to be immune to several diseases that should give me trouble. When I
asked about this, they told me that they hoped to discover just what
cell-change takes place when we take our anti-cancer immunization. That
thing they have yet to discover."
"But--"
"Oh, they use our immunization," she said, slipping the dress up. "But
they use it as an African witch doctor might use a typhoid serum. The
thing you have to remember, Charles, is that if Terrans had gotten
there first there would have been the same conflict, but started by the
other side."