“They were designed that way, true enough.” Mondrian glanced around, to see if Luther Brachis wanted to make any comment. The other man seemed more than ready to stay in the background. “However, as I mentioned, the Constructs were all equipped with considerable powers of self-defense, to protect them from possible enemies of unknown strength. Remember, they were supposed to operate alone, far from any support, against any dangers. Unfortunately, their defensive powers can also be used offensively. Their power plants can produce small fusion weapons. Their power lasers and shearing cones are enough to destroy any ship. They contained the best detection equipment that we could produce, since we wanted them to be able to find other life forms at the longest possible range. I could give you full details, but perhaps a single example is more informative: any single Morgan Construct could destroy a city, or lay waste a fair-sized planetoid. The surviving Construct, unfortunately, was the best equipped of the seventeen that were made.”

Throughout Mondrian’s reply there had been a slow stirring within the Tinker Composite. As he ended there came a burst of speech, so fast that the computers cut in to decipher and re-translate it.

“Why? gabbled the Tinker. “Why, why, why? In the name of Security, you humans have produced a danger to yourselves and to all the other species of the Stellar Group. Why does anyone need a Morgan Construct? Consider yourselves. You have been exploring the region around your Sun for six hundred of your years. We have watched that exploration for more than three centuries, ever since humans discovered our world and offered us space travel. And what have we seen? The Perimeter now encloses a region one hundred and sixteen lightyears in diameter, with more than two thousand star systems and a hundred and forty-three life-supporting planets.