Sopho shrugged. "In a certain per cent of cases, where radiation is extreme but not fatal--naturally, the reproductive capacity will display unpredictable, permanent damage. Recessive damage. When, however, two persons mate who exhibit matching gene deterioriation--then--as this man says--" The colonel's hand dropped. "I didn't know," he murmured. "Not certainly. I didn't even know that you men were sure." Learned spoke. "War against the generations! Good--!" He checked himself. Chris said, "Have you that right?" Sopho replied angrily, "That's a right implicit in any war! If you kill a soldier--you destroy _all_ his potential progeny--not simply endanger a few of them. The same fact applies to civilians." "You do not," Chris answered, "corrupt the children of the survivors for centuries to come. No." He meditated a moment. "If the salt of the earth shall lose its savor, wherewith shall ye resavor it?" Sopho said, "If changing man's environment will not change the evil of war--" "Evil?" Chris repeated questioningly. "But does not man always believe his wars are just? Whatever cause--whichever side?" Sopho ignored the inquiry. "--how do we change man?" "Love one another," Chris said. A slow smile came upon the physicist's face. "We should have loved the Nazis? And love the Jap who lies ahead?" "Of course." Chris nodded soberly. "If you had loved them, you would never have let them sink into the pit of their despair--arm--turn upon yourselves. Had you loved them, you would have assisted them--before you were compelled to restrain them by such violence." "The rights of nations--" Sopho began. "--exist in the minds of men. You did not love them. You loved yourselves. You saw torment born in them all, and saw it grow, and feared it--and stood, like any Pharisee, reciting your virtues but not lifting a finger to assist them." "He's right." Learned shook his head ruefully. "How right he is!" "Love!" Sopho said the word scornfully. "Little you know of Nature. Little of love you'll see there!" "It's strange," Chris answered, "that I see in Nature nothing _else_ but love. Pain--yes. Sorrow--yes. Tragedy--yes. To every individual. Yet--in the sum of Nature--only love." Sopho's eyebrows arched skeptically. "Do you really believe that the primitive phrases of a man who possibly existed--some two thousand years ago--could fix the attention of a modern scientist?" "Evidently they do not." Chris bent and peered through the round, bowed window of the ship as if he could orient himself even among the traceless clouds. He looked at them again. "I talked in very simple words, doctor, to very simple people. The extreme simplicity of the formulations should--I thought--make the concepts increasingly understandable, as men pursued truth. I advised them, remember, to know the truth. I meant all of truth. I warned them that an excessive fascination with worldly goods--to the exclusion of inner goodness--would undo all peace of mind--"