He felt his hand sweating on the sensor plate and he thought, Be honest. Truthfully, he replied, “Superior to some of them. But why are they accepted?”

“Very well,” Martin said angrily. “Considering your advanced technology and its potential for giving virtually unlimited assistance, why must we leave Earth to join the Federation?”

“I know, I know,” Martin said, wondering why a mere device, no matter how sophisticated its design, should make him feel like taking a sledgehammer to it. Was the examiner merely a terminal of an advanced computer as the brochure said it was, or was he taking their word for that, just as the unquestioning, unsuspicious, ordinary, and successful candidates for citizenship had taken it? More calmly, he went on, “I fully realize that our solar system is very far removed spatially from the center of galactic science and culture and that, because of your advanced transportation systems, this separation is more important psychologically than physically. But surely if we were to remain on Earth, our contacts with other Federation cultures would be more gradual, and natural?”

Perhaps there was not a multi-tentacled Federation Citizen controlling the examiner as Martin had begun to suspect. It was behaving like a computer now, one which had been programmed by a bunch of extraterrestrial bureaucrats.

“I have studied those pages closely,” Martin said patiently. “Earth is a very sick planet. Polluted, overpopulated, and denuded of natural resources to such an extent that in a few decades starvation and war will result in virtual genocide, according to your people. You are probably right. But why, with the incredibly high level of technology which you are so fond of demonstrating to us, don’t you simply cure our sick planet? Forcing our people into premature contact with alien cultures could be dangerous.”