"_That_ may well be what these new radio waves mean. They may be attempts at communication--if we were foolish enough to respond to them. We don't dare to take any chances. "So from now on there are going to be swarms and swarms of those meteoroids--and every one of them is going to be a real artifact on its own--a _manufactured_ one, made according to Our specifications, carrying an unmistakable message. A false one! "They will be cunningly constructed from forms of matter injurious to any conceivable variety of life. We'll cover them all. And they'll be barren of even the most primitive bacteria. They will carry in themselves a silent warning: 'Approach the planet from which these come at peril of your instant death ... not matter what kind of being you are!' That should save us forever." I'd been wondering why Sephar had kept his big mouth shut all this time. To my way of feeling, he should never have been with us at all. He would never have been a Council member if he hadn't been a multibilibaire. But I'd won a fair fight with him, and officially we had to be friends, so I hadn't protested when I found he was included in the summons. But now the big blowhard had to put his two grocs' worth. "Your Reverence--Your Honor--" he spluttered. "May I ask a question?" "Certainly, brother." "Since players have been lobbing pebbles out into space for thousands and thousands of ganaths, and as Your Honor says, some of them must long ago have landed somewhere, who knows what dead give-aways may have been in any of them?" "Is that your question?" "No, I have two. First, why haven't these intelligent beings whose existence you're presupposing--" I saw Myrwan's face set, and I knew he'd noted that rude and insulting word, but I managed to conceal my smile--"why haven't they come here before this? And since they haven't come, if they're smart enough to figure out our whereabouts why aren't they also smart enough to realize the difference between the old pebbles and these new ones, and to know that we're putting something over on them?" We sometimes say that though the Thinkers are of course overwhelmingly our superiors mentally, they lack the emotional control which is the great characteristic of the rest of us Real People. I wish those scandalmongers could have seen Myrwan then. His face was as white as his beard and his wings quivered, but he let Sephar have his say out and he answered him very quietly. "As to your first question, brother," (and if anybody ever called me "brother" in that tone I'd know it was a case of fight or run) "the only logical reason is that it must be only recently that such beings have reached a state of culture where they are able to analyze the pebbles and draw the right conclusions from them.