“Indeed? Without even landing on their planet?”

Devi-en explained. “A number of radio messages were recorded by those of our ships that penetrated the planetary atmosphere on observation missions, particularly in the early years. I set our linguistics computers to work on them, and for the last year I have been attempting to make sense out of it all.”

The Archadministrator stared. His bearing was such that any outright exclamation of surprise would have been superfluous. “And have you learned anything of interest?”

“I may have, your Height, but what I have worked out is so strange and the underpinning of actual evidence is so uncertain that I dared not speak of it officially in my reports.”

The Archadministrator “understood. He said, stiffly, “Would you object to explaining your views unofficially—to me.”

“I would be glad to,” said Devi-en, at once. “The inhabitants of this planet are, of course, large-primate in nature. And they are competitive.”

The other blew out his breath in a kind of relief and passed his-tongue quickly over his nose. “I had a queer notion,” he muttered, “that they might not be competitive and that that might—But go on, go on.”

“They are competitive,” Devi-en assured him. “Much more so than one would expect on the average.”

“Then why doesn’t everything else follow?”

“Up to a point it does, your Height. After the usual long incubation period, they began to mechanize, and after that, the usual large-primate killings became truly destructive warfare. At the conclusion of the most recent large-scale war, nuclear weapons were developed and the war ended at once.”