“Completely.”
“Then here is your question: What should the humans do?”
This time, oddly enough, there was almost no disagreement among the thousands of human groups who had fought so bitterly about the answer to the second question. We could have sent our answer within a few hours. I waited, but only because it seemed impolite to offer a quick answer to what the Riddlers had said would be the hardest question.
Finally I beamed our consensus: “To an intelligent creature, the loss of intelligence is as bad as or worse than death. If the radiation field were to be turned off, an intelligent species would be destroyed. That is unconscionable. The field must be left on, and the humans must go away.”
“Very interesting,” said the Riddlers. “Thank you. That is an illuminating answer. If you will please wait…”
The ship again did its high-acceleration vanishing trick. We waited.
We are still waiting. It has been almost a year and a half since they left, but there is no sign of the Riddlers.
I do not think that they will be coming back. We failed the test. It is as simple as that.
Isn’t it?
I would certainly like to think so.