Two of the gods had been arguing all morning. A galactic morning, that is⁠—one sixth of the time it took Betelgeuse to complete its orbit around the circumference of a cross-section of the spiral whorl of the sprawling IX Galaxy⁠—some four hundred and twenty thousand years.

And the fury of the last nova explosion indicated that Mogar, ranking member of the IX Galactic Council, was becoming annoyed over his failure to browbeat Dalen, who had come up from the LIII Constellation Committee only a few eons before.

But finally, just before noon, Mogar’s tremendous thought-force thundered at the younger god out of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud and rolled across ninety thought light-years of space to the constellation Bootes, where Dalen was trying to settle a territorial dispute between two solar system deputies who had been involved for eighteen centuries over the jurisdiction of a newly formed binary system.

Mogar’s thought-force said: “Your theories are preposterous and repellent. No entity in physical shape can ever learn to live a useful life. For one thing, they seldom evolve the quality of infinite age. And records will show that in all the II Supergalaxy no species of biped with an opposed thumb has ever been able to live peacefully with itself. All such species are self-destructive.”

A great rumbling came from the Cloud, accompanied by trillion mile streams of sullen fire, and then Mogar’s thought-force, muttered but still understandable at that distance, came again: “When you have been in the Council long enough to become oriented, you will see that these ideas of yours are nothing but sentiment, and have no place in a council of the gods.”