In short, the two main pieces of information, the bases on which the Canopean plan was predicted, were not understood by us at all. In spite of our being told everything. To emphasize this even more: now, looking back at the Conference, I can see that there was nothing not said, not made plain, not explained. But we misinterpreted what we being told. And again, it is impossible not to ask, now, why Canopus set up the Conference in this way? To forestall reproaches of niggardliness? No! Knowing Canopus, this not the reason. But they must have realised that we were not taking in what being said, were understanding everything in our own way.

So why did they do it? It is only recently that I have had an answer to this question. The beginnings of an answer… The end of the Conference was marked by all kinds of festivities and jollities. We were taken on trips to other colonies; invited, “if we were in that part of the Galaxy,” to visit them for as long as we liked—the usual courtesies.

Back on our Home Planet we Sirians lost no time. Planets in the healthy, vigorous condition of Rohanda were—and are—rare. We of the Colonial Service were all delighted and full of optimism. Incidentally, it was at that Conference that Rohanda acquired its name. Perhaps this is not the place—it is too soon—to remark that when the planet suffered its cosmic reversal, and ceased to be so pleasant, even if it did not lose any of its fertility, Canopus at once jettisoned the name Rohanda, substituting another, Shikasta, “the broken or damaged one,” felt by us to be unnecessarily negative. This mixture of pedantry and poeticism is characteristic of Canopus, one that I have always found irritating.

Spacecraft had already thoroughly surveyed both Southern Continents, independently of Canopus.