"But you have expressed a very important point," continued Reilly. "I don't want a man coming in here who doesn't know what the Academy stands for. We have a long tradition, but we mean more than just words carved over a marble arch. 'The Greater Good for the Greater Number.' There are hundreds of years and hundreds of thousands of lives lived and died behind those seven words. From Earth's first colony in the Centauri system to the latest native intelligence charted in the Crab Nebula, those seven words have wrapped up an entire philosophy and dictated the means of living by it. "But what do the words actually mean? I think, Mr. Whyte, that is the crux of your question. Indeed, that is the crux of the structure on which the Academy is founded. Oh, it's easy to say that the words mean what they say, because they do. That and no more. But how to explain them so that someone who doesn't _know_ will know? In a sense, I've been trying to do that ever since my first girl friend threw me over as an incurable romantic when she learned that I intended to enter the Academy. For many people, I'm afraid there is no explanation. They are incapable of understanding, no matter how hard we try. But I don't think you gentlemen are in that class. Otherwise you would not be here at all. "The obvious place to begin is the beginning. 'The greater good.' Not the greatest, mind you--the greater. There are those who quibble over words; they are responsible for this particular delineation. It would be idealistic to try for the greatest in all things. Despite his thousands of years of development, man is still a long ways from being an ideal creature. There are certain things that remain beyond his capabilities. In certain isolated incidents, the course we follow does produce the greatest good possible. But they are isolated. "The same reasoning follows the choice of 'The Greater Number.' Only our limitations prevent us from seeing to it that every world in the galaxy is the best of all possible worlds, insofar as the peculiarities of a particular world permit. We do our best, and take pride in the fact that that best is better than anyone else's. "But so much for numerical values. You most want to hear what we _do_. And that can best be summed up in one word: everything. Everything, and yet that, too, has its limitations. Impossibilities are beyond even us. Improbabilities are given a fair chance. We are constantly seeking out courses of action that will benefit not the individual but the race. And in some instances, not even a race, when there are many races involved in a particular manner. The methods we follow, the actions we take in a particular instance, may sometimes seem cruel and unreasoning...." V The families were on the move, away from their comfortable homes under the everlasting warmth of the sun. Luke Royceton shifted his weight in the copter and trained the glasses on a column of dust rising three miles to the west and ten thousand feet below.