"Make you well; send you back."

The answer came as a shock to Tchassen; it was what a civilized people would have said. But the Earth natives were savages—brilliant, inventive individualists, but nonetheless social barbarians. It would have seemed much more logical if the native had said he was keeping Tchassen for a religious ceremonial sacrifice.

"As soon as my wounds are healed," Tchassen repeated, "you'll let me go?"

The native ran his hand over the Captain's bandages. "This wound is a little thing, of no importance." He touched Tchassen's head. "Here is your real sickness, in the brain. We teach you how to think like a man; then you go home."

"You're going to teach me? Me? Do you realize, I come from the civilized galaxy?" Tchassen began to laugh; he wondered if he had been taken prisoner by a band of madmen.

"We show you how to be human," the native answered blandly. "Not fight and kill each other, the way you and the others did when the post blow up. We know meaning for civilization; you have none. It is easy secret. We learn after the invasion, when our world destroyed. Real civilized people get along; live in peace; give help to each other. Your people and ours: we can be brothers here on the Earth, and on your other worlds, too."

Tchassen's laughter was touched with hysteria. Have we failed? He knew the answer now: for the captives, the dispossessed men of the Earth, would become the teachers of the conquerors—and teach them what the conquerors had come to build on the Earth. No, we have not failed; we have simply misunderstood the strange genius of the quixotic Earth. The defeated would one day rise up and conquer the galaxy. Tchassen saw that clearly, but no longer in fear. He wanted to make their stamina, their grit, their ability to survive a part of himself. He wanted to make himself over—as an Earthman.

 Prev. P 23/23