“The Reeth Covenant had been in effect for thirty thousand years. The Covenant marked the end of interstellar wars. The basic philosophy of the Covenant is that each life-bearing planet shall mature independently without outside influence.
“Each primitive planet is scheduled for periodic survey and grading. The grading is as follows: Division One — all planets which have acquired the internal combustion engine. Division Two — primitive atomics. Division Three — exploration and colonization of home system planets. Division Four — a practicable interstellar drive. Division Five — the conquest of the barrier of the speed of light.
“All planet groups from Division One through Division Four are normally obsessed with the egocentric belief that they are alone in the galaxy and the universe.
“After Division Four is reached the planet is approached, acquainted with the Covenant and requested to cooperate. Minor disciplinary measures are invariably required. Then the planet becomes an autonomous member, is assigned guardianship over the primitive planets in its immediate area, is placed on trade routes, receives and gives technological information.
“There are six hundred planets which have attained Covenant Status. Each has a guardianship function over six and a half million planets of primitive status. Under normal conditions, Earth would have been left severely alone, with surveys conducted in secrecy, until Division Four had been reached. It had been estimated that Earth was within three thousand years of a practicable interstellar drive.”
Laura began to speak again, but the Syalan who called himself Mike interrupted. The wall on which had been pictured all that she had spoken of, faded to its normal orange radiance.
Mike stood in front of Jeff. He said, “I will say this aloud for your benefit, Earth-creatures. I wish to prove my conviction that my team-mates’ solution to this problem is faulty. Now tell us of any discrepancy you have noted.”
Jeff waited a moment. He said slowly, “It goes wrong in that part where you say that we would be left alone until we had achieved an interstellar drive. You are not leaving us alone. You are interfering. So there is something we haven’t been told yet. I can think of several things. Maybe you four are operating outside of this Covenant you spoke of. You do come from the opposite end of the galaxy. That means that you wouldn’t normally be responsible for us. Maybe you’re running from something. Maybe you’re operating outside of your own laws.”
He thought he saw a look of quiet triumph in Mike’s odd eyes.
Jeff bludgeoned his mind into another pattern. “Wait a minute! Maybe this precious covenant of yours has gone sour. Maybe your member planets have split up andБ"
“No, Jeff,” Julie said softly.
He glanced angrily at her. “Have you got the answer?”
“I... don’t know. Maybe they want us to... grow up faster. There’d be a reason for that, you know. But I don’t think it would come from inside the galaxy. Something from outside, maybe. Something threatening the whole structure they’ve built up, so that they want us to develop more quickly than we are and be a part of it all so that we can... help.”
Jeff saw Laura turn to Mike and give him a look of triumph. Mike turned moodily away.
Laura said, “You see, he has been telling us that despite the way this room affects the ability to perceive and to understand, you would both find it impossible to break free of petty thought patterns and think in terms of a unified galaxy. The rest of us were more certain of you. We select you carefully.”
“Selected!” Julie gasped.
Jeff turned to her. “Remember? We had the next six all planned. Means wasn’t one of them. Then Haskill jumped in and sicked us onto Means.”
“Mr. Haskill was very open to our sort of suggestion,” Elaine said.
“Why should you want us?” Jeff asked.
“You’ll be told that in due time,” Paul said.
And then, in quiet tones, with the wall once again illustrating each point, Laura told them of the thing which menaced the galaxy.
“Reeth is a young galaxy. It matured late. Consequenty the life-apex-form has had little time to develop. The nearest island universe is six hundred and eighty thousand light years away. Reethian astro-physicists have long observed the higher incidence of nova and super-nova, of fading suns in the neighbor galaxy. They knew that they observed conditions existing better than a half million light years ago, and in comparing it to Reeth as it must have existed at that time, they knew that Glayd, as they called the neighbor galaxy, was older. They guessed, and rightly, that if conditions on the planets of Glayd were such as to have caused life to exist, that life-apex would vary greatly from the man-like life-apex on Reeth, due to the divergence in basic homogeneity — Glayd having been formed from a different area within the original super-condensed matter.
“It was considered a problem of no specific importance.
“Glayd could not be visited by means of supra-light travel. The reason is simple. Think of a familiar stone by your back porch steps. You know every indentation on its surface. You know its color, size. Maybe you have lifted it. Now you are fifty parsecs from that stone. Shut your eyes. Make yourself see it, in every particular. Some part of you has returned to a position near that stone. You have vizualized a part of yourself back to that familiar yard, with its scrawny elm and the trash can with the bent cover.
“Each planet then, to the Reeth ships, is a stone. Each planet is a metallic card eight inches by four inches. It contains an unbelievable number of infinitesimal points of varying magnetization. The points define the size, shape, color, weight, topography and ‘feel’ of a planet down to the fiftieth decimal point. It takes fifty decimal places sometimes to achieve a uniqueness of one planet over another at the opposite end of the galaxy. Feed the planet card into the heart of the ship. The heart of the ship is a visualizer. It ‘sees’ that planet as described by the card. In ‘seeing’ it, it puts a portion of itself at that planet. The rest of the ship is so anchored to that fleeting portion that the ship returns as a unit to the place so delicately described.
“It is the speed of thought.
“And it is but one heartbeat from one end of the galaxy to the other.
“And that is why Glayd could not be visited by that method — not at least until a ship had gone to Glayd at less than the speed of light and had made out a visualization card on a specific Glayd planet. After that was done, Glayd would be as close as the corner store. Closer.
“So a ship was sent to Glayd at one meter per hour less than the speed of light. Six hundred and eighty thousand light years. But time contracts in transit. To the passengers it becomes, at a contraction ratio of seventy thousand to one, but ten years experienced. The ship left ten thousand years ago. Five years ago it returned. It took ten thousand Earth years to go a bit over nine thousand light years into space — counting the slow acceleration period — and a heartbeat to return.
“To return with the news of an incredible fleet driving down on Reeth. More than a million ships. More than a million gigantic grey mushrooms, driving — hood forward, squat stems pointing back toward Glayd. Each ship larger than any ever contemplated by those of Reeth. The migration of the inhabitants of a fading galaxy to one that was newer. Other news, too. News of weapons unleashed, of a coldly savage attempt to destroy without attempt at communication. News that only the fact of the visualization card being already in the slot saved the tiny Reeth ship, brought warning to the galaxy.