“They offered us their world as home,” Jassilane murmured, shaking his head. “For twenty years your people have dreamed of nothing but coming home. And now that they have found one, you would take them back out into the void again. Minerva is gone; nothing we can do will change that. But by a quirk of fate we have found a new home-here. It wifi never happen a second time.”
Suddenly Garuth was very weary. He sank down into the reclining chair by the door and regarded the three solemn faces staring back at him. There was nothing that he could add to the things that had already been said. Yes, it was true; the Earthmen had
greeted his people as if they were long-lost brothers. They had offered all they had. But in the six months that had gone by, Garuth had looked deep below the surface. He had looked; he had listened; he had watched; he had seen.
“Today the Earthmen welcome us with open arms,” he said. “But in many ways, they are still children. They show us their world as a child would open its toy cupboard to a new play-friend. But a play-friend who visits once in a while is one thing; one who moves in to stay, with equal rights to ownership to the toy cupboard, is another.”
Garuth could see that his listeners wanted to be convinced, to feel the reassurance of thinking the way he thought, but could not
-no more than they had been able to a dozen times before. Nevertheless he had no choice but to go through it yet again.
“The human race is still struggling to learn to live with itself. Today we are just a handful of aliens-a novelty; but one day we would grow to a sizable population. Earth does not yet possess the stability and the maturity to adapt to coexistence on that scale; they are just managing to coexist with one another. Look at their history. One day, I’m sure, they will be capable, but the time is not ripe yet.
“You forget their pride and their innate instincts to compete in all things. They could never accept passively a situation in which their instincts would compel them, one day, to see themselves as inferiors and us as dominant rivals. When that time came, we would be forced to go anyway, since we would never impose ourselves or our ways on unwilling or resentful hosts, but that would happen only after a lot of problems and eventual unpleasantness. It is better this way.”
Shilohin heard his words, but still everything inside her recoiled from the verdict that they spelled out.
“So, for this you would deceive your own people,” she whispered. “Just to insure the stable evolution of this alien planet, you would sacrifice your own kind-the last few pathetic remnants of our civilization. What kind of judgment is this?”
“It is not my judgment, but the judgment of time and fate,” Garuth replied. “The Solar System was once the undisputed domain of our race, but that time ended long ago. We are the intruders now-an anachronism; a scrap of flotsam thrown up out of the ocean of time. Now the Solar System has become rightly the
inheritance of Man. We do not belong here any longer. That is not a judgment for us to make, but one that has already been made for us by circumstances. It is merely ours to accept.”
“But your people . . .” Shilohin protested. “Shouldn’t they know? Haven’t they the right . . . ?” She threw her arms in the air in a gesture of helplessness. Garuth remained silent for a moment, then shook his head slowly.
“I will not reveal to them that the new home at The Giants’ Star is a myth,” he declared firmly. “That is a burden that need be carried only by us, who command and lead. They do not have to know. . . yet. It was their hope and their belief in a purpose that nurtured them from Iscaris to Sol. So it can be again for a while. If we are taking them away to their doom to perish unsung and unmourned somewhere in the cold, uncharted depths of space, they deserve at least that before the final truth has to become known. That is precious little to ask.”