The man's smile was an odd mixture of friendliness and impersonality as they shook hands. He said, "My name is Rex, Mr. President. The fact that in one of your languages the word means _king_ is purely coincidental. I am not a monarch in any sense. My title is Director of the Seventh Sector." As Rex had got to his feet, the chair under him had swung under the desk out of his way. Now it moved back to its original position. And as the President took the seat Rex indicated beside the desk, he had a whimsical thought: _I wonder how that chair knew he was ready to sit down again?_ * * * * * Rex nodded to the young man in the pastel-red uniform. The latter bowed slightly, turned and left the room. Rex turned his dark eyes--almost feminine in their beauty--on the President. His quick smile was even more impersonal now. "Shall we get to the business at hand, or could you do with a little refreshment first?" "I'd prefer the former," The President said briefly. "Good. I imagine your aide told you some of it, but I'd better recap that and then go on." Rex nodded briefly in The Press Secretary's direction. It was the silvery-haired man's first acknowledgement of his presence. "You are probably curious as to who I am and just what the Seventh Sector is. I'll tell you. The Seventh Sector is a team denoting a certain part of the known universe. It contains approximately nine-hundred thousand solids of a twenty-million-ton weight or over. Eleven of these solids supports animate life at around the evolutionary stage of your own--or higher. Do you follow me?" When The President was slow in answering, Rex said "I suggest you lay aside any mental resistance and take all statements I make as fact." "Why should I do that?" "Because my deceiving you would be pointless and because I must transfer a great deal of information to your mind in a very short time." The President said nothing and Rex went on. "As Director of this sector, it is my job to check the development on its various planets and make progress reports to the Council." "And this Council is located--?" "Many light years from here--at the hub of the known universe, but that is not important." "I thought perhaps we--or our representatives might someday--" "Appear before it? I'm afraid not. I fear you are treading the path of those who once inhabited your neighbor planet, Mars." "Then life does exist--or did--on Mars?" "Oh yes, but we were forced to eliminate it." The President spoke calmly. "Then you are able to depopulate whole planets?" "Whole systems if necessary. Let me explain. When conditions are right, life inevitably comes into existence upon a planet. The entities involved are always pretty much as you and I, physically, because conditions produce a ruling race of our structure or do not produce life at all.