Malhomme listened with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side,
occasionally throwing in a comment or a question.
As he finished, Rynason said, "That race that Kor warned them about
sounds remarkably like us. A warlike race that would crush them if they
left the planet. We haven't found any other intelligent life ... just
the Hirlaji, and us."
"And the Outsiders," said Malhomme.
"No. This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about
the same level as the Hirlaji themselves. Remember, the Outsiders had
already spread through a thousand star-systems long before this. No,
we're the race they were warned against."
"What about the weapons?" Malhomme said. "Disintegrators. We haven't got
anything that powerful that a man can carry in his hand. And yet the
Hirlaji had them thousands of years ago."
"Yes, but for some reason they couldn't duplicate them. It doesn't make
sense: those weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of
the Hirlaji, but they had them."
"Perhaps your aliens _were_ the Outsiders," Malhomme said.
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