Miriam Allen De Ford

“ First, why haven't these intelligent beings whose existence you're presupposing—" I saw Myrwan's face set, and I knew he'd noted that rude and insulting word, but I managed to conceal my smile—"why haven't they come here before this? And since they haven't come, if they're smart enough to figure out our whereabouts why aren't they also smart enough to realize the difference between the old pebbles and these new ones, and to know that we're putting something over on them?" ”

“ We call them pebbles. To beings who might consider us giants—and if there really are intelligent beings in other worlds they might well be of an entirely different size from us, though no less dangerous for all that—they might seem huge meteors. Suppose that, though most of them would undoubtedly burn up and all of them be considerably reduced before they struck another planet as meteorites, some of them at least might still be sufficiently large to be analyzed chemically? ”

“ Naturally, no phph player is absolutely perfect; if he were, there would be no contest and nobody would bother to attend a game. Pebbles fall short, they go awry, and sometimes they are thrown so hard that they escape altogether from our light gravity and fly into outer space. ”

“ From this time forth there are going to be more 'meteors' shot off our atmosphere than ever before—and every one of them is going to tell a completely false story about conditions in their place of origin. ”

“ Since a lot of the Ground Dwellers are also phph addicts (they could never become players, of course, being far too small and light to handle the phph pebbles) , this means that a real champion never has to do any kind of work again, being fed, clothed, housed and entertained by his admirers, and can devote all his time to the game.
Gral and Hodnuth, having alternated as champions for many a long ganath, had it pretty easy. ”

“ The astronomers among Us have become more and more concerned. We have finally been led to the reluctant belief that Our former theories have been wrong—that this actually is not the only inhabited planet. ”

“ I raised my hand to ask a question, and Myrwan nodded.
"I don't understand." I said politely. (Meaning he was being too abstruse for any of us, for it is understood that there is no keener apprehension in the council than my own.) "Is Your Honor implying that there exist outside our world other intelligences that would be capable of observing and drawing conclusions from the pebbles?"
"Exactly. I know that the general belief is that it is impossible that extraplanetary beings can exist, least of all intelligent beings. ”

“ We don't dare to take any chances.
"So from now on there are going to be swarms and swarms of those meteoroids—and every one of them is going to be a real artifact on its own—a manufactured one, made according to Our specifications, carrying an unmistakable message. A false one!
"They will be cunningly constructed from forms of matter injurious to any conceivable variety of life. We'll cover them all. ”

“ I sneaked a glance at the phph players, and as I suspected they were looking anything but happy. Phph champions are pretty vain. They don't care for rival attractions.
One of our party—it was Sephar, who as usual pushed himself forward—bowed to the Thinker and asked if he wouldn't be more comfortable among us. ”

“ Since players have been lobbing pebbles out into space for thousands and thousands of ganaths, and as Your Honor says, some of them must long ago have landed somewhere, who knows what dead give-aways may have been in any of them? ”

“ They're much too afraid of us for that, and anyway their reverence for the Thinkers is positively religious—much more so than ours. After all the Thinkers are simply specialized members of our own race, and though we revere them we could scarcely worship them, as the Ground Dwellers do. ”

“ And if We found that these residual meteorites contained material indicating their origin in an inhabited world—still worse, in a world sufficiently evolved to entail the possibility or probability that its highest life-forms might be intelligent or even civilized—wouldn't we take steps at once to investigate? ”