I’m being accused of modesty, a horrible and thoroughly unnatural crime. - Isaac Asimov

World War II had been something unique. That was one war there could be few idealistic qualms over. We were fighting an absolute evil that seemed quite beyond the usual defame-the-enemy routine; and there seemed a reasonable hope that once the war was over there would be some way of setting up a form of world organization to prevent future wars. The euphoria of the days of the immediate end of the war and of the setting up of the United Nations didn't last long and the Korean War spelled final ruin to the first great hopes.

Limmar Ponyets was completely a-lather when the call reached his receiver - which proves that the old bromide about telemessages and the bathtub holds true even in the dark, hard space of the Galactic Periphery.

Violence is the last refuge — ’ ‘– of the incompetent.