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On the negative side of the scale was Dirrul’s complete lack of psycho-biological intelligence, or a sense of scientific semantics. Neither to him seemed important. He missed them not at all and resented the legal requirements that forced him to take Dr. Kramer’s course before he could qualify as a space-pilot.

The papers he had written for the professor were beautifully constructed patterns of logic, cast in well-turned phrases. They had clarified the criticism which others put inarticulately. It was the precision of his argument that disturbed Dr. Kramer and his faculty friends.

Dirrul was amused as the distinguished scientists skillfully manipulated the conversation to create counter-arguments opposing his. It was a game played in abstractions, a technique of which Dirrul was an instinctive master. Apparently the scientists found some sort of excitement in the game, since on succeeding evenings Dirrul was swamped with invitations from other faculty members–so many, in fact, that he had to neglect the serious work of the Movement. When he complained to Paul Sorgel, the Vininese agent was delighted.

“We can get along without you for awhile, Eddie,” Sorgel said. “You’re doing something much more important. You have a real in with the science crowd, and you’ve got them on the run because your arguments make sense. Every doubt you sow in their minds now will make our work just that much easier when the proper time comes.”

Occasionally Dirrul had an uneasy feeling that he was making no real progress at all, that when he talked to the scientists he was a dancing puppet dangling on invisible strings. It seemed impossible that the scientists of the Ad-Air University could be so repeatedly defeated by his logic. Slowly, however, he reasoned his way to an explanation.

The scientists, like the system itself, were in the last wild frenzy of a decaying social order. They had lived so long in the atmosphere of relative truths, they had so carefully schooled themselves to avoid all absolutes, that they were unable to elude the simplest processes of logic. Their very efforts to be objective made them too honest to reject a conclusion once Dirrul had demonstrated the careful structure that seemed to support it.

* * * * *

A month passed. Dirrul felt divorced from the Movement, existing in suspended animation in a cloud of wordy unreality. Then abruptly the slow-moving dream ended. Late one night Paul Sorgel slipped into Dirrul’s apartment and announced in an emotionless whisper, “The Plan’s ready. You’ll have to carry the details to Vinin. We can’t use the teleray–the Union monitors might pick up the message and decode it.”

“Naturally our Vininese Headquarters will want to know, Paul,” said Eddie, “but can’t that wait? We’ll need every man here when we–“

Sorgel interrupted him. “I’ve made one or two changes in Glenna’s original plan. It was too impractical. A handful of men can’t take over half a galaxy.”

“Glenna and Hurd weren’t after the entire Planetary Union, Paul–that’s out of the question. We meant to liberate Agron first. The capital is here and for awhile the government would be disrupted. When the people on the other planets saw how much better our social organization had become, modeled on the Vininese system, they would stage their own revolutions just like ourselves.”

Sorgel laughed scornfully. “And in the meantime, of course, none of them would think of attacking you and throwing your people out?”

“Not if we seized the Nuclear Beam Transmitters,” said Dirrul, “no space-fleet could come near us then.”

“Eddie, you’ve lived in Agron too long. You’re not thinking straight when you try to build the Plan around a single weapon.”

“Why not, Paul? It’s a perfect defense. In less than thirty seconds the Beam Transmitters can charge the entire stratospheric envelope of Agron. Nothing can move through it without disintegrating, yet life on the surface of the planet would go on quite normally because the atmosphere serves as an insulation.”