He stopped speaking then, for a moment, waiting for Angelo's reply. Waiting simply for him to ask "what kind of help could we Artists possibly give _you_...."--waiting for, and prepared to take unflinchingly, the searing taunt that could not help but be in the question ... "--you who can fly ships through Space, who have at your computer-tips the hard-won miracles of science and engineering?" But wordlessly, the leader waited. And in the brief moment before he spoke, the history of it all flashed through Angelo's mind; the history that began with the Revolt. Three centuries ago, with the Ancestors of them all on Ste. Catherine. The artists, the philosophers, the writers, the orators, the dramatists, the poets--all of them, who had, when at last they could no longer stomach their civilization's arrested adolescence and its refusal to be weaned from its electronic and atomic toys, remembered the first Fundamental Law of Order in art, and put it to devastating use. Unity. In Unity, they rebelled. They warned, first, in fairness. They took pains to point out carefully that it is a healthy sign for the developing child to become intrigued with movement, sound, and color--that it was normal for a child to spend hours observing, examining, operating, even building a new mechanical toy. But when his new books gathered dust and fell into disuse--when he could quote all of Faraday and none of Swinburne--when this happened, his development as a human being of full depth and breadth was at an end. When he became hypnotized by his toys-- When motion and force became an obsession-- When the means became an end in itself; when the tool became the _raison-d'etre_, rather than the structure it had been fashioned only to help build, then the point of civilization had been hopelessly lost, and thinking men had but one alternative: leave, and start over. And so, banded together, they had left. It had not been so difficult. For to the Ancestors, a tool was always that and nothing more. They could not build spaceships, but they could buy them, and so they had. They could not navigate Space nor pilot their craft, so they hired the technicians and engineers who could. And when the Ancestors had arrived at a planet of their choice (the scientists had been duly proud of their superior accomplishment in being able to find just such a planet--and of course were paid more than the engineers and technicians) the Ancestors gave them all sizable bonuses and sent them packing back to Earth where there were so many fine Things to spend their money on.