“No,” 12-Upjohn said in slowly dawning horror. “You had better spell it out.”
“Why, they say that’s why we get cancer. They say that the brain is the ultimate source of all tumors, and is itself a tumor. They call it ‘hostile symbiosis.’ “
“Malignant?”
“In the long run. Races that develop them kill themselves off. Something to do with solar radiation; animals on planets of Population II stars develop them, Population I planets don’t.”
Robin One hummed an archaic twelve-tone series under his breath. There were no words to go with it, but the Consort of State recognized it; it was part of a chorale from a twentieth-century American opera, and the words went: Weep, weep beyond time for this Earth of hours.
“If fits,” he said heavily. “So to receive and use a weak field like telepathy, you need a weak brain. Human beings will never make it.”
“Earthworms of the galaxy, unite,” Robin One said.
“They already have,” Sergeant Oberholzer pointed out.
“So where does all this leave us?”
“It means,” 12-Upjohn said slowly, “that this Central Empire, where the stars are almost all Population I, is spreading out toward the spiral arms where the Earth lies.
Any cluster civilizations they meet are natural alliesclusters are purely Population Iand probably have already been mentally assimilated. Any possible natural allies we meet, going around Population II stars, we may well pick a fight with instead.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Sergeant Oberholzer said.
“I know what you meant; but this changes things. As I understand it, we have a chance of making a straight hop to the nearest Earth base, if we go on starvation rations”