"Maybe later," he said soothingly. "Go sit down and wait."
Norma turned and headed for the divan.
"Spill it," he said to Carolyn. "What the hell's going on, and why?"
"This is war," she said.
"Like hell it's war. This is backstabbing. But it'll be war as soon as
we can fight back."
"It is war," she repeated. "The process should not be unfamiliar to
you; you've done it yourselves time and again. First you weaken the
enemy by undermining his resources, by lowering his resistance, by
turning his efforts towards advancement against some stumbling block.
Then--"
"I presume that doping the women of a race with hellflowers is an
honorable practise?" sneered Farradyne.
"It is better than dropping a mercurite bomb. We got to interstellar
space first and met another people as racially jealous as we are: your
people. We could have made a landing openly, but if we had, the warfare
you're threatening would have happened long ago. And there would be
nothing left of either of our people but smouldering planets to mark
the meeting-place of two stellar peoples."
"You can say this, knowing that no Solan has the barest inkling of how
this doodad in the hold can permit us to travel faster than light?"
* * * * *
Carolyn looked at him contemptuously. "You're an idealist, Charles,"
she said. "I'll tell you what would happen. You'd greet us with cheers
and invite us in--long enough to steal our warp-generator. You'd trade
us your medical science for our chemistry and your electronics for our
gravities, and then you'd meet us face to face to prove to yourselves
that even though you got a second-place start, you could move faster
and hit harder than we could. You'd carry your war to us, and we'd
carry our war to you, and there would be cause and effect, and attack
and retaliation, with each blow a bit more vicious until your people
would be planting mercurite at the same time we were. And then, as I
say, the next interstellar race to visit this region of the sky would
find the radioactive remains of two ex-cultures. I know, because both
our people come of the same stock."
"All right," he snapped. "So you've justified your actions to yourself."
"_Of course._ Everybody is self-justified."
"And you justify the doping of our race by calling it better than
meeting us face to face."
"Remember your own history. Even before the First Atomic War everybody
realized that warfare was a bankrupt measure, to be undertaken only
after all else failed. You conducted your conflicts under cover, by
boring from within, by undermining the national structure. Similarly,
when your people have been lowered in resistance, we shall move in
quietly and make of you an asset to our economy, instead of a ruined
structure that must be helped."
"Wonderful. However, I don't cotton to the idea of being an abject
supplicant to your superior kind."
There was a yelp from behind him and he whirled to see Norma Hannon
about to letter something on Brenner's forehead.
He raced across the floor and caught her hand just before the
acid-laden brush touched Brenner's skin. "Norma," he said quietly.
"Don't."