way down to . . .
All the same, it seemed inarguable that the whole center
of the Galaxy, an enormously diverse collection of peoples
and cultures, was being held together in a common and
strife-free union by telepathy alone, or perhaps by telepathy
and its even more dubious adjuncts: a whole galaxy held
together by a force so unreliable that two human beings
sitting across from each other at a card table had never
been able to put it to an even vaguely practicable use.
Somewhere, there was a huge hole in the argument.
While he had sat helplessly thinking in these circles, even
Robin One was busy, toting power packs to the welding crew
which was working outside to braze together on the desert the
implausible, misshapen lump of metal which the Marine
sergeant was fanatically determined would become a ship
again. Now the job was done, though no shipwright would
admire it, and the question of where to go with it was being
debated in full council. Sparks, for his part, was prepared
to bet that the Calleans would not hinder their departure.
“Why would they have given us all this oxygen and stuff
if they were going to prevent us from using it?” he said
reasonably. “They know what it’s foreven if they have
no brains, collectively they’re plenty smart enough.”
‘Wo brains?” 12-Upjohn said. “Or are you just exag-
gerating?”
“No brains,” the man from the Assam Dragon insisted.
“Just lots of ganglia. I gather that’s the way all of the races
of the Central Empire are organized, regardless of other
physical differences. That’s what they mean when they say