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 we’re all sickhadn’t you realized that?”