That night Ostby slept very little. In his thoughts two emotions fought for dominance. On the one side were the people of Earth--he still thought of it as his Earth. He had lived with them; they were his friends; their problems and joys had always been his--until now. The menace to them had been his to share, and to help eliminate. He had accepted this assignment knowing that, at best, he would never be able to return; at worst, that he would be killed. And he had taken it willingly. Now he knew that he had been duped. He had been an alien among the people he loved. And they had sent him to fight his own kind! His final decision came hard, but by morning he had made his choice. He rose early but had to wait until well into the afternoon before the Imperator put in an appearance. Magogar greeted Ostby with a smile, but there was no friendliness in it. He was a man who made no friends. The people about him were divided into two classes: those who served or obeyed him, and those who opposed him. The latter did not survive long. "Step out onto the sun balcony with me," the Imperator said, with the easy assurance of a man accustomed to obedience. He strolled to the railing of the balcony and leaned against it, looking out over the water of the city's harbor. The balcony extended out over the water, which came directly up to a small walk bordering the palace. "I have given your case very deep thought," the Imperator said, "and I will be perfectly frank with you. Whether I accept you or dispose of you will be directly determined by what I decide within the immediate future. There is no point in my asking your views because your range of choices is very small, and entirely incidental to my decision. You can willingly accept whatever I decide for you--if I let you live--or you can oppose me. The latter, of course, would be tantamount to asking for death. Do you have anything to say before we continue?" "Not knowing what you have to offer leaves me with no possibility of making a choice," Ostby said carefully. It was immediately evident, however, that he had made a wrong choice of words. The Imperator's arrogant brows rose and he frowned. "I never _offer_ anything," he said, spacing each word with a hard emphasis, "except the choice of accepting my decisions." When Ostby made no reply, Magogar seated himself and remained in deep introspection. "Let me tell you a story," he said finally. "At first it may sound like idle boasting, but I can readily demonstrate to you that I am the living proof of its authenticity." The Imperator paused while he tilted back his chair and stared at the ceiling. "In the early years of man's existence," he said, "he possessed two physical survival characteristics. First, he could run. As he was one of the weakest of the animals he found that most expeditious. And because the instinct to run grew to occupy a prominent place in his emotional makeup, it enabled him to survive.