Gorbel, with facts whose validity he alone knew and whose
relevance he alone could judge. He was, in short, loading the
dice, and the last residues of Corbel’s tolerance were evapo-
rating rapidly.
“Of course there was resistance back there at the begin-
ning,” Hoqqueah said. “The kind of mind that had only re-
cently been persuaded that colored men are human beings was
quick to take the attitude that an Adapted Manany Adapted
Manwas the social inferior of the ‘primary’ or basic human
type, the type that lived on Earth. But it was also a very old
idea on the Earth that basic humanity inheres in the mind,
not in the form.
“You see. Captain, all this might still have been prevented,
had it been possible to maintain the attitude that changing
the form even in part makes a man less of a man than he was
in the ‘primary’ state. But the day has ,come when that at-
titude is no longer tenablea day that is the greatest of all
inoral watersheds for our race, the day that is to unite all our
divergent currents of attitudes toward each other into one
common reservoir of brotherhood and purpose. You and I
are very fortunate to be on the scene to see it.”
“Very interesting,” Gorbel said coldly. “But all those things
happened a long time ago, and we know very little about this
part of the galaxy these days. Under the circumstances
which you’ll find clearly written out in the log, together with
the appropriate regulationsI’m forced to place the ship on
emergency alert beginning tomorrow, and continuing until
your team disembarks. I’m afraid that means that henceforth