All this time, the old albino man had been listening silently. Now he said: "The revolution was doomed to failure, Ker-jon; don't you see that? Even if it achieved its aim, what would have happened then? We live in a static environment, with no external challenges to keep our culture going. If you won, the mutants would have taken over; tyranny would have exchanged hands, that's all. I'm a mutant myself, but I say this: if you had succeeded, the mutants would have treated non-mutants, in time, in the same manner the non-mutants treat them. Merely a reversal of roles. Would you have wanted that?" "No, but--" "Wait; let me finish. We have a tremendous external challenge, only we fail to see it. What is the Ark, Ker-jon? An artificial world, a manufactured environment. A vessel taking us from someplace to someplace else. Do you know where we came from?" "Urth--" "Yes, but what is Urth? We don't know. It's in the old books, but no one reads them. And where are we going? Even I don't know that, and I have tried to find out. The books are not indexed, and it might take one man years to find out. Working together, a group of men could shorten that time to months. "Further, what is the void of space outside? Mere blackness, or--I don't know. And the stars, the little pin-points of light we see, what about them? Are they worlds? Was Urth a star; do we now travel towards another one? Again, I don't know. But we can find out. There is our challenge, Ker-jon. There is the stimulus which can unite the Ark and put a permanent stop to internal squabbles. Are you blind to that?" "I'm not blind to anything, old man! All I know is this: the revolutionaries are confined. Maybe they await death--thanks to you. I also know that more men and women each day are exposed forcibly in the Chamber of Change--which means that a new generation of mutants will be born. Any challenge on a purely abstract level sounds awful silly, ridiculously unimportant, pedantically trivial.... Umm-mm, never mind. You just don't understand." "Wait," said the albino. "A compromise, Ker-jon. If you can rescue your fellows, what then?" "You want an honest answer? I think I'd still hate you and what you stand for, a tired old man with old, meaningless ideas--" "Can you rescue your friends alone?" "I don't know; I can try." "And wind up wherever they are, awaiting death with them?" "I said I can try." "Well, if you had help--let us say, if my two 'policemen' cooperated, you might pull the whole thing off by trickery, don't you think, with no bloodshed at all?" "It's possible," Ker-jon admitted. "A bargain. We'll help you, but then you must help us. Flam-harol is the revolutionary leader, but you carry almost as much weight with the revolutionaries as he does. Very well, if you rescue your people, if the Ark falls into your hands, will you then cooperate with us?" "Why the hell didn't you offer that _before_ the revolution? All this wouldn't have happened."