“Oh, come on, Lee!  Think!  They’re in contact with the Outsiders; you said so yourself.  And just remember this:  the Outsiders obviously considered it inevitable that there would be war between us.  Now put those two facts together and tell me the horses aren’t dangerous!”

Rynason said slowly, “It isn’t as simple as that.  The order given to Tebron was to stop all scientific progress and stifle any military development, and he seems to have done just that.  The idea was that if the Hirlaji were harmless when we found them there might be no need for fighting.”

“Perhaps.  But we weren’t supposed to know that they were in contact with the Outsiders, either—­that was probably part of the purpose of the block in the race-memory.  But we got through the block, and they know it, and presumably by now the Outsiders know it.  That changes the picture, and I’d like to know just how much it changes it.”

“They’re not in contact with the Outsiders any longer,” said Rynason.

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Tebron broke the contact—­that was in the orders too.  The priesthood, which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the machine, was disbanded.  When Tebron died he didn’t appoint a successor; the machine hasn’t been used since.”

Manning thought about that, still frowning.  “Where is the machine?”

“I don’t know.  If it hasn’t been kept in repair it might not even be usable any more, wherever it is.”

“I’ll tell you something, Lee,” said Manning.  “There’s still too much that we don’t know—­and too much that the Hirlaji do know, now.  Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we’re not as strong as they thought we were.  It took us eight thousand years to get here instead of five thousand.  Let’s just hope they don’t think about that too much.”

He stopped, and paced to the window again.  “Look around you, Lee—­out on the street, in the town.  We’ve hardly put our feet down on this planet; we’ve got very little in the way of weapons with us and it will take weeks to get any more in here; there’s practically no organization here yet.  We could be wiped off this planet before we knew what hit us.  We’re sitting ducks.”

He came back to stand before Rynason.  “And what about the Outsiders?  They think of us strictly in terms of war, and they’ve been keeping themselves away from us all this time.  That’s obviously why they pulled out of this sector of space.  Up until now we’d thought they were dead.  But now we find they’ve been in contact with this planet ... all right, it was eight thousand years ago.  But that’s a lot more recent than the last evidences we’ve had of them, and they’ve obviously been watching us.

“Now, you’ve been in direct contact with the horses’ minds; you’ve practically been one of them yourself, for awhile.  All right, what’s their reaction going to be when they realize that the Outsiders, their god, overestimated us?  What will they do?”