"A machine, Andy, is a mechanical projection of a man's mind. It is built to do that which can not be done by man himself. It is capable--sometimes--of exceeding man's desire by a small amount, but is seldom capable of coping with a situation for which it is not engineered. Since no man on Terra has an I.Q. of higher than about 160, for a guess, the machine can not be engineered to analyze mentalities of I.Q. 260 without fail." "You do not believe the I.Q. 260 then?" "Yes, I believe that machine. But the one that gives the curves of intent can be fooled by such a man." "Then what is his purpose?" "Supposing this race intends to take over?" "Then why don't they just move in and take?" "Time. Say this race is overrunning the Galaxy. No matter how they start, plans must be made, even if they originated on Centauri. Since--and let's try to put ourselves in their place and consider. They have not moved in. That means a waiting period of some kind. It also means considerable distance from home base, because if we were close to them, the program would have started already. Now, since there is this waiting program, we can assume that they are not ready yet. And not being ready means one of two things. They are finding opposition on other planets of other systems. In this case it is not Divide and Conquer, but _keep divided in order to conquer_!" * * * * * "I'm beginning to follow you." "If we had the drive, and the power for it, their job might well be impossible. I doubt that anything alive could make conquest of an armed planet unless that planet was quite inferior in weapons. Given the same weapons and power, and at best stalemate. For the very energy-mass of a planet is unbelievably great, and the weapons that may be permanently anchored in the granite of Terra would be able to withstand anything up to and including another, equally armed planet to stalemate or draw. And granting that Terrans are hard-boiled people because we were brought up that way from infancy, we'd give any race a mighty tough fight." "Then what do you want me to do?" "I want knowledge. I want something that will permit me to use that ninety percent of my brain." "How in the devil do you expect me to come up with something like that?" Andrew Tremaine smiled solemnly and said, flatly: "Gene, I'm almost convinced that Gerd Lel Rayne and company are generating some force-field that prevents it!"