Devi-en said, “I will never take part in colonization again.”

The Archadministrator said, mournfully, “None of us may ever have to. The wild ones of that planet will emerge and with large-primates and large-primate thinking loose in the Galaxy, it will mean the end of—of—”

Devi-en’s nose twitched. The end of everything; of all the good Hurria had done in the Galaxy; all the good it might have continued to do in the future.

He said, “We ought to have dropped—” and did not finish.

What was the use of saying that? They couldn’t have dropped the bomb for all the Galaxy. If they could have, they would have been large-primate themselves in their manner of thinking, and there are worse things than merely the end of everything.

Devi-en thought of the vultures.