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Norvis said nothing. He couldn't.

"Take her up, Davis," Smith said. "We'll show him what we're talking about."

A few moments passed, as Norvis sat dazedly. Then Smith said, "Norvis, come here." He walked over to where the three Earthmen were standing in front of a large pane of black glass. Behind the glass were thousands of tiny sparks of light.

"You see," Smith said, "but you don't understand. We said we came from the Outer Darkness, remember? That's it. And those little lights, Norvis, are thousands upon thousands of Great Lights, so far away that it's impossible for me to tell you how far—your language doesn't cover it!"

Norvis dizzily tried to grasp the immensity of the great black abyss he was staring into. Then, out of the corner of the window, there came a line of light, a great curve of glowing radiance. Below it was utter blackness.

"We're taking you out where you can see Nidor; that's your Great Light, shining through the clouds on the other side of your world. We're on the night side now, but we're heading for the day side. We'll have to put filters on the viewport; the Great Light is so bright it would blind you in a few seconds if you looked directly at it."

They showed him the Great Light, and they showed him the huge white ball that was the cloud-covered Nidor. They explained it all, carefully. He learned that his theory about the Cataclysm was correct; Nidor was a planet of shallow seas and low mountains, and after the tremendous earthquake of thousands of years before, only one little continent had remained—the continent Norvis' people had called Nidor, and which they had thought was the whole universe.

-

When it was all over, he was sitting again on the little seat, facing the three Earthmen. "It's, terrible," he said softly. "We have thought that the Great Light was something that helped us and protected us, but—"

"Just a minute," Davis said. "Don't get the idea we're trying to tell you that there isn't Someone who keeps an eye on us all. We, too, have a concept of a Great Being —but if He exists, that ball of gas put there is just part of His handiwork; if He exists He's a lot bigger and grander and more powerful than that star. And, if He exists, your prayers have reached Him, no matter what you call Him."

Norvis nodded, but he knew his faith in the priesthood of the Great Light, small though it had been before, was now completely shattered. He frowned. "What was your reason for doing all this, Smith?"

The Earthman knotted his fingers together. "Let's look at it this way," he said, after a long pause. "A man needs friends. He can't live alone. He must have someone to like and love, and someone or something he can pit himself against. Call it conflict, call it challenge, if you like. Not the bloody conflict of battle, but the friendly conflict of a game. Do you follow?"

Norvis nodded hesitantly.

"Well, we Earthmen need friends, too. It's the same thing with a race. Long ago, we were divided into different groups—not true races, for they could interbreed, but differing in skin color and other minor ways. These groups conflicted with one another — sometimes violently — and this conflict helped to make us wiser and stronger because, in watching others we learn more about ourselves.

"We fought and quarreled and argued. We were divided by religions and political beliefs and by skin color, and the battles surged over Earth for many thousands of years. And all the time, we were learning. We developed weapons so powerful we dared not use them; we conquered Space and the battles still went on. But eventually, the inevitable happened.

"The lines of demarcation between the groups began to blur. Political divisions became meaningless, religious differences were smoothed out, and the various races blended into one. We became a unit. A single, solidified group—-the Earthmen. We had conquered our planet and the stars. And ourselves.

"But we lacked something," Smith continued. "We lacked friends. And we lacked conflict. Within a few thousand years, we would stagnate and become static and—eventually— die out. And then we found Nidor. We had searched for another intelligent race for centuries before we found you. Once, we found an intelligent race — vicious, monstrous things whose thinking was so different from ours that we had no common meeting ground. We were forced to destroy them.

"But Nidor was perfect—an intelligent species, not too unlike us, with a way of thinking only slightly different. And there was no question of our ever losing our separate identities as races; Earthman and Nidorians are too unlike for that. But we had found what we needed. We needed you—and you needed us. You had formed a perfectly static society; it was incredible to us that a society could remain unchanging for so long. So we had to get you to move, to start a dynamic instead of a static civilization."

Smith moistened dry lips. "We have done that now," he said.

-

"I still don't understand," Norvis said weakly. "You've wrecked us— ruined us. Things will never be the same again. Why didn't you just come down and teach us about your race and your world, instead of all this mummery?"

"It wouldn't have worked. Unless your people developed on their own, they would have been so overwhelmed by us that we could never be equals. So we had to smash your culture—force you to learn to build anew."

"But—to smash us so completely!"

Smith smiled. "We were very gentle, believe me. We could have hit you so hard you'd never have recovered—at least not in time to be of any use to us. What would happen, Norvis, if we'd dumped a few hundred billion weights of cobalt all over Nidor? Or printed up perfect imitations of paper scrip? Or blighted the peych-beans for a century? What would have happened? And there are even worse ways. No. We had to be very careful and handle you gently."

"I ... it's incredible, Smith."

The Earthman smiled. "The first thing we needed was a better, cleverer kind of Nidorian—one who could think for himself. So we started the Bel-rogas School. We taught you, and well—but the main purpose was something else.

"Our admission requirements were high. Only very intelligent and very healthy students were admitted. And the School was surrounded by spacious parks filled with romantically secluded nooks. Do you follow me?"

Norvis' face broke into an awed smile. "Great Light! My mother and father met there—and my grandparents! You brought the best of Nidor there to ... to breed them!"

Smith smiled. "That's a rather crude term for it, but it is selective breeding. Nobody's free will was interfered with—no one was forced into anything. It was simply made very convenient. And we got the result we wanted, Norvis. You!"

"Me? I am—"

"You're the result of four generations of carefully-controlled genetic manipulation. There are others, of course, but your line was the best. And believe me, you far exceeded our expectations. Tell me—why aren't you the Executive Officer of Nidor, instead of Kris peKym?"

"I didn't want it," Norvis said. "I found out years ago that heroes don't live very long. I tried it and damned near got stoned to death for my pains. Since then, I've left the heroics up to hero-types—like Del and Kris."

"And Ganz peDel," Smith added.

Norvis nodded. "I'll probably need Ganz too before long; if Kris peKym keeps up the way he has been, someone's going to slit his throat one of these days. But what's this got to do with your program?"