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It was quite a lot of fun, watching them. They had a great time. As it was, they didn't need the 'O' people's trucks. They had brought their own vehicles in their ships, light vehicles that carried them, load after load, to the nearby city to 'conquer' it!
Heisenberg and I left the control tower at this point. We watched them in the city as they scurried through shops, made a mess of things, stole everything they could to their heart's delight. But there was only so much that they could carry away.
The funniest scene we witnessed was in a hotel. One of the Gorans had decided that he would take a bath, or a shower. He was undressed, but couldn't get any water to come on. He tried every knob, lever, and fixture. He pulled, pushed, kicked the bathtub twice, and got exceedingly furious. Finally he had enough, pulled his gun from his clothes on the floor and shot the bathtub out of sheer frustration and then walked off, his clothes in hand.
Heisenberg and I returned to planet 'O' a week later. The entire fleet had moved on by then. The damage they had caused was minimal, especially when considering the destruction a full-scale war might have caused. Most of what they had looted was left behind on the way, or in piles at the airport. Some of the 'O' people had already returned, clearing the runway of furniture, computers, blankets, bicycles, canned food, anything one cares to name that they couldn't find space for on their gun ships.
In time, most of the 'O' people moved back to their beloved planet, as Olaf had assured them they would. Some, obviously stayed behind at their new places, even if there weren't any hot oceans there, which appeared to be rare in the universe, and those nice clammy, cloudy, gray days that they seemed to love. Some people, probably also moved on in search of still other new planets, possibly founding whole new civilizations throughout the universe. We wished all of them well.
In the end, we had no way of knowing what exactly the final result was, of Olaf's conducting an interplanetary war. But what did it matter? We were satisfied that the 'O' people could be relied upon not to misuse the Bohr/Miller technology that had saved their civilization. Olaf and I felt that we could trust them, since the basis for it had already been contained in their own culture. We were also satisfied that the Gorans' fleet had been too primitively equipped to have monitored Olaf's lecture. And even if they had seen it they wouldn't have been able to make any use of it, not knowing the language for one part, nor understanding anything of the underlying principle. Thus the galaxies remained safe.
One thing appeared to be certain, the galaxies would never have been safe had the Bohr/Miller technology fallen into the Gorans' hands.
But what about me, I thought. I had seen Olaf's lecture at the studio. I had watched it three times from beginning to end, before the war started. Could I be trusted? Would I carry this volatile knowledge back to the Earth in a weak moment? In fact, could anyone of the ship who has been on this voyage return to Earth and not sow the seeds in the minds of humanity towards the ultimate destruction of the universe? I suggested to Olaf, if this were the case, we could never allow the ship to return. Its effect would be worse than if it carried a deadly virus. How much more lethal than the most deadly disease would be a technology that provides total freedom of movement, if it fell into the hands of a decaying, fascist civilization? This question was widely discussed on Bohr's planet.
The discussion generated a growing respect for the natural order of the universe that we felt should never be tempered with. As a decaying civilization collapses within itself, it looses its technological capabilities. The result is that its range of influence becomes progressively restricted to the point where it completely isolates itself from the universe. In this way, no damage can be done outside itself. The process of collapse assures that the insanity that led to it becomes self-quarantined.
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