When a vanquished aggressor is killed,
nothing is healed while the killer looses his soul.
The alternative is difficult,
but profound.
We found Olaf in the middle of preparing for a planet wide education broadcast when we returned.
Heisenberg briefed him about our adventure.
"It didn't seem right," I added.
"But neither does it seem right to let them come here and destroy those people's world," said Heisenberg.
Olaf grinned again. "Let them come. They won't destroy anything. I guarantee that they will cause almost no damage. When they find the entire planet a ghost town, what will they do with it? They are obviously too stupid to operate its complex transportation networks and factories. They may steal some food, a bit of fuel maybe. Eventually they will get bored and leave. A lifeless planet is quite useless to them."
Olaf looked at me and smiled. "You see, technology is something quite personal. It's an extension of a people. The technology of one civilization, rarely fits the mentality or the needs of another."
"If this is so, why have we come here to learn from them?" Heisenberg remarked.
Olaf shrugged his shoulders and threw his hands up in disgust. "I don't have all the answers either!" he said sharply. "So leave me alone, please!"
He went back to his broadcast. One could see the stress he was under.
"Let's talk to Mahesh about it," I suggested. In the last moment, however, we decided against that. We went back to the battle cruisers.
"Maybe if we transposed them all to some virgin planet in space," Heisenberg suggested. "They wouldn't be harmed there. They would be forced to build a new life for themselves, which would keep them too busy to harm others."
"Let's try it!" suggested.
Well, we gave it a try. Heisenberg plugged three more of the metal colossuses out of the fleet and transposed them to the vast grassland of a still developing planet in a different galaxy. We watched them climb out of their ships, walk around them in a dazed bewilderment, wondering what had happened. I felt rather sorry for the poor Gorans. They looked so terribly helpless, so totally lost, so hopelessly out of place in this vast empty land. It certainly was an odd sight, seeing the three giant gun ships grounded on a sea of grass and gentle winds. What good were missiles for hunting grasshoppers and gophers, which they soon would have to catch in order to stay alive? I told Heisenberg that it wasn't right to do this to them.
"They'll survive," said Werner Heisenberg. "They're not stupid. They'll just have to change their lifestyle a little. They can no longer live by stealing and looting, killing and plundering. They'll have to learn to live by creating and building and developing a civilization of their own. They may some day populate this planet and build a great civilization here."
"They may also fail and not survive," I replied. "So it isn't right to do this to them."
Werner looked at me surprised. "You didn't approve of what happened last time, how they ended up dead. This time I'm saving their life! But don't worry, we'll come back in few months and see how they are doing."
"Sure we are!" I said in a sad tone of voice.
"No, I really mean it. We'll come back! But for now they stay," he said. "Did you ever think of what might happen if Olaf's project won't work, and the 'O' people would really have to defend themselves after all? Then none of them will survive."
"I never thought of that," I said.
"We do what we can," he said.
"Yes, but would we still respond in the same way if the Gorans had asked for our assistance, rather than the 'O' people?"
