Thinking the meeting was over, Brad started to get up from his chair.
“Wait,” said Kosoff, motioning for Brad to sit down again. “There’s something else I want to discuss.”
Brad dropped back into the chair, thinking, More talk. More time wasted.
“What is it?” Pedersen asked.
“Those cats on Beta. How can we prevent them from attacking the Gammans the next time the two planets approach each other?”
Brad immediately replied, “We send a team to Beta and wipe out the monsters, once and for all.”
“You can’t do that!” Steiner objected. “They’re an alien life form, just as much as the octopods and the Gammans. We can’t destroy them.”
“Why not?” Brad demanded. “The only reason they exist is to kill the Gammans. Get rid of them. Now, while they’re hibernating.”
“They are not hibernating,” Steiner said. “From what the surveillance satellites report, the few cats still alive on Beta are breeding, laying their eggs.”
“So that they can kill the Gammans when the two planets come close again.”
A little less certainly, Steiner replied, “Yes, I suppose so.”
Felicia said, “We really don’t know much about their life cycle.”
“We should study them more closely,” said Steiner.
Kosoff nodded agreement. “We have two years remaining before we have to return to Earth. How much can we learn in that time?”
“More than we know now,” Felicia said.
“If we could get a couple of specimens to dissect,” Steiner mused, “we could learn a lot about their biology.”
“You’re missing the point,” said Brad. “Those monsters were created to kill the Gammans, to keep the Gammans in their Stone Age stage of development, to prevent them from advancing back to their former level of civilization.”
Kosoff waved a dismissive hand. “That’s the Gammans’ mythology. There’s no evidence that it’s based on fact.”
“No evidence?” Brad snapped. “What about those spacecraft the cats use to travel from Beta to Gamma? Completely automated, nanotechnology that we haven’t achieved yet. The cats didn’t create those devices, someone else did.”
“The so-called Sky Masters,” Pedersen said, almost sneering.
“Mythology,” said Kosoff. “Figments of the Gammans’ imagination.”
Felicia added, “The cats seem to be programmed to die after a few days on Gamma.”
“After they’ve finished killing the Gammans,” said Brad. “There’s a purpose to their existence. If we want the Gammans to survive, we’ve got to put an end to those beasts.”
Pedersen suggested, “Perhaps we can find a way to prevent them from traveling from Beta to Gamma.”
“How?” Brad demanded.
The planetologist shrugged. “I’m not an engineer…”
Kosoff turned to the holotank. “Emcee, is there a way to prevent the cats from getting to Gamma?”
The master computer’s avatar sat there smiling amiably for several heartbeats—an eternity for the femtosecond reactions of the computer. At last Emcee said, “That is a question that should be forwarded to the World Council, on Earth.”
“Kill them all,” Brad insisted. “Now, while we have the chance. They only exist to kill the Gammans. They’re instruments of genocide.”
Kosoff rumbled, “An eye for an eye, is that what you want?”
Steiner almost smiled. “Who’s quoting scripture now?”
Felicia corrected, “That’s not from scripture. It’s from Hammurabi’s code of laws for the Babylonians.”
“I don’t care if it’s from the Magna Carta,” Kosoff snapped. “We are not here to destroy alien species.”
Brad asked, “So what do we do about the cats?”
Kosoff stroked his beard once, twice. Then, “Let me talk to the World Council about this.”
Brad thought, A bureaucrat’s reaction. When in doubt, buck the question upstairs.
Kosoff focused his piercing blue eyes on Brad. “I have another quotation for you, MacDaniels. When you fight monsters, be careful that you don’t become a monster yourself.”
“Friedrich Nietzsche,” Felicia said.
Brad said nothing. He merely smiled tightly at Kosoff. But he was thinking, How can we protect the Gammans from the monsters?