The Greks Bring Gifts

So, we did what we saw was necessary. We sent a ship to the home planet of the Aldarians. Some of the Aldarians we'd freed were on board. There were Greks ruling that world. We took the necessary action. Then there were no more Greks there—and Earth had an ally and men had staunch and grateful friends.

Then that first ship went exploring. It found a habitable planet not occupied by any but lower animals. We decided to colonize it. But it had to be protected against Greks! So we began to hunt for them. We found worlds with Grek masters ruling millions of slaves. We took action. We found more desirable, colonizable worlds . . .

All of this is tediously well-known. The Earth space fleet is large and competent, and our spacemen are welcome visitors on all the worlds which are now our allies. Interstellar trade has been developing admirably, and as long as our fleet can be said to rule the ether waves, we can look forward to an indefinitely long period of peace and prosperity for ourselves and the other races we have rescued or protect.

But we who remember the coming of the Greks to Earth are sometimes scoffed at by later generations.

We find it hard to explain to them how terrifying the coming of the ship was, and why we behaved as we did. We did act like idiots! But all men can, given the opportunity.

What we sometimes suspect is that maybe, some day, our descendants will be fools, too, only in a different way. Suppose, for instance, that a man-manned ship finds a desirable new planet, far out of the normal range of our ships. And suppose there's a semi-civilized race on it. Suppose this human ship comes casually out from behind that planet's moon, and waits to see what the planet's inhabitants will do. And suppose that presently it pieces together a vocabulary of those barbarian's words, and says that it will be very happy to pass on such technical information as the aborigines can make use of, and therefore it asks permission to land . . .

Heaven help us, it could happen! So we who remember the coining of the Greks hammer at later generations, trying to make them see that they mustn't be the same kind of fools we were. Or the Greks were. Or the Aldarians. Or the—

It seems to be true that all the intelligent races of our galaxy are capable of acting like fools if the conditions are right. That is, we can all be idiots under proper encouragement. So—

Don't do it! Don't do it! Don't!