Silently Kennon watched him descend the porch steps. He seemed steady enough. For a moment Kennon debated whether he should see him home--and then decided against it. If Alexander needed help he’d have asked for it. As it was, it was better to leave things alone. Certainly he didn’t know Alexander well enough to act as a guardian. He turned back to the living area. The stereo was playing something soft and nostalgic as Kennon sank into the chair Alexander had vacated. He let his body relax. It had been as full a day as he had ever spent filled with changes so abrupt that they were exhausting. He felt confused. There were no precedents he could apply. Neither his studies nor his travels had prepared him for living in a situation like this. Legally and biologically the Lani weren’t human. But they were intelligent, upright, bipedal mammals whose morphology was so close to man’s that it had taken the ultimate test to settle their status. And being a Betan, Kennon was suspicious of the accuracy of that ultimate test. But the Brotherhood of Man was based upon it. The feeling of unity that pervaded mankind’s expanding empire was its product. From almost the beginning of mankind’s leap to the stars it had been recognized that men must help each other or perish. The spirit of co-operation against the common enmity of alien worlds and cultures transcended the old petty rivalries on Earth. Men--all men--were brothers in arms. And so the Brotherhood was born--and the concept born of necessity developed its muscles in a thousand battles on a thousand hostile worlds. And ultimately it evolved into the only form of central authority that men would accept. Yet basically it was not a government. It was an attitude of mind. Men accepted its decisions as they would accept the rulings of a family council, and for the same reasons. The Brotherhood laid down certain rules but it did not attempt to enforce them. After all, it didn’t need to. It also arbitrated disputes, admitted new worlds to membership, and organized concerted human effort against dangerous enemies. And that was all. Yet in its sphere the authority of the Brotherhood was absolute. There was only one criterion for membership in the Brotherhood--membership in the human race. No matter how decadent or primitive a population might be, if it was human it was automatically eligible for Brotherhood--a free and equal partner in the society of human worlds. Kennon doubted that any nonhuman race had ever entered the select circle of humanity, although individuals might have done so. A docked Lani, for instance, would probably pass unquestioned as a human, but the Lani race would not. In consequence they and their world were fair prey, and had been attacked and subjugated.