at the end of two weeks, he sat on his bed, taking stock of what he had accomplished.

it was very little.

and he was very tired.

the tiredness was familiar. it was just like school all over again, he thought, the same long exhausting hours of driving oneself relentlessly. he wondered when he'd be able to relax. he didn't dare relax now. when he had a lead, a definite hope of some kind, he could begin to let up. but not till then. it would be too easy to give up and let go altogether, go the way jerwyn had gone.

he was beginning to understand why jerwyn had given up.

he was beginning to understand a lot of things—the odd, cryptic remarks he had heard about the natives when he first arrived, the mixed admiration and exasperation they seemed to arouse.

he remembered a man named gandhi from ancient indian history.

the nemarians could have given gandhi lessons.

working with them was like working with an invisible wall of resistance that weakened here and strengthened there, gave in unexpectedly at one place and resisted implacably at another.

at times his plans were praised; then they were put into effect with an efficiency that astonished him. at other times they were criticized, in a casual, friendly manner that enraged him. then they were not put into effect at all. when he insisted on obedience, the natives reacted with an attitude of patient tolerance, and did nothing. most of the time, his orders were received indifferently and carried out with an agonizing slowness.

he pushed and prodded them. he reasoned with them. he shouted at them.

he reaped nothing but frustration.

they didn't hate him. he knew that. he had never seen a trace of malice in their expressions. people smiled at him when he passed, and children came up to tug at his hand and ask him to come to visit their house. there was none of the stony hatred here he knew existed in many places for the all-powerful galactic union.

they simply seemed to lack all appreciation of the importance of his position.

yet they knew, he thought. they knew he had what amounted to almost unlimited power over their planet. they knew a space-fleet that had burned life off the face of entire planets lay at his disposal. they knew he could crush any rebellion instantly.

but, of course, they weren't rebelling, he thought. they weren't even openly uncooperative. there it was again: they weren't even unfriendly; they deluged him with constant invitations.

they knew of his power, but they acted as if it didn't exist.

and he wasn't sure they weren't going to win with him, as they had with jerwyn. the galactic union did not look with approval on any call for aid except in a military crisis; such a request was in effect an affidavit of failure. besides, he didn't want to complain. he didn't want to set himself against them. he was working for them, not just for himself.

he sighed and began to get ready for bed.

primitive people had always fought progress and change. they had always clung to old, outworn methods. but there was more to it than that, he thought. primitive people were usually full of superstitious fear of change, but the nemarians were not afraid. you couldn't think of them as fearful. they knew the danger—they knew the strength and power that faced them—but they were not afraid. they didn't even "handle with care".

where did their courage come from?

or was it just blind stupidity, he thought, a refusal to look facts in the face, to admit that they were the helpless, backward subjects of an immensely more powerful and more advanced civilization?

he pulled off a shoe absently, and he thought of all the documents and reports he had read about nemar. ross had given them to him, and he had searched in them for a clue to help him understand why ross was sending him here. he had read and reread them, and they had told him little more than ross himself about nemar.

there was something peculiar about all those documents, he thought, something odd about the way they were written. they described an undeveloped planet without valuable resources or any kind of technology, in no way out of the ordinary. but between the lines was something that said this planet was out of the ordinary, in spite of the apparent facts. there was the unavoidable feeling that something was left unsaid.

what were they trying to hide? why hadn't they let him know what he was in for?

terrans had been coming for forty years. in forty years, they must have learned something. they must have found out something about what made these people the way they were, and about how to deal with them. there should have been warnings and suggestions and at least, if nothing else, descriptions of methods that had been tried and failed. it should all have been there, out in the open; it should have been down in black and white: this is the situation, so far as we know it; these are the problems.

instead, there had been only routine description, and veiled hints and allusions.

he hadn't been here long, he thought. there was a lot to learn here yet. the other terrans, the ones who had been here a long time, knew something he didn't know. he could tell from their faces, from their attitude toward him. cortland didn't know, or he would have told him, and some of the others didn't either, but most of them did. they knew something, but whether it was pleasant or unpleasant knowledge, he couldn't tell. whatever it was, it affected them. they neglected their work, and they had a different look from the terrans back home.

jerwyn had known, and he hadn't told him. he'd said he'd have to live here to find out.

he lay down and stretched out wearily on the bed.

well, the answers here exist, he thought. somehow, when he had all the pieces, the jigsaw would have to fit together and make a coherent picture.

maybe he was looking in the wrong direction.

but he didn't know where to look.

he thought of the day he had just been through, remembering incident after incident when he had had all he could do to keep his temper under control. annoyance welled up in him again, as he recalled the series of frustrations, the useless arguments.

his mind was still revolving in an upheaval of confusion and anger as he fell asleep.