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one purpose alone—to conserve the Parmalee-Hitchcock recessive of the ninth chromosome and to eliminate the dominant which usually masks it—to breed sheep rather than wolves.
    It is wryly amusing that most of the “wolves” of the period—the Parmalee-Hitchcock island is recessive; there are few natural “sheep”—were caught by the hysteria and co-operated in the attempt to eliminate themselves. But some refused. The Northwest Colony eventually resulted.
    That the Northwest Union should eventually fight the rest of the world was a biological necessity. The outcome was equally a necessity and the details are unimportant. The “wolves” ate the “sheep.”
    Not physically in the sense of complete extermination, but, genetically speaking, we are descended from “wolves,” not “sheep.”
    “They tried to breed the fighting spirit out of men,” Mordan went on, “without any conception of its biological usefulness. The rationalization involved the concept of Original Sin. Violence was ‘bad’; non-violence was ‘good.’”
    “But why,” protested Hamilton, “do you assume that combativeness is a survival characteristic? Sure—I’ve got it; you’ve got it; we’ve all got it. But bravery is no use against nuclear weapons. What real use is it?”
    Mordan smiled. “ The fighters survived . That is the final test. Natural selection goes on always, regardless of conscious selection.”
    “Wait a minute,” demanded Hamilton. “That doesn’t check. According to that, we should have lost the Second Genetic War. Their ‘mules’ were certainly willing to fight.”
    “Yes, yes,” Mordan agreed, “but I did not say that combativeness was the only survival characteristic. If it were, the Pekingese dog would rule the earth. The fighting instinct should be dominated by cool self-interest. Why didn’t you shoot it out with me last night?”
    “Because there was nothing worth fighting about.”
    “Exactly. The geneticists of the Great Khan made essentially the same mistake that was made three hundred years earlier; they thought they could monkey with the balance of human characteristics resulting from a billion years of natural selection and produce a race of supermen. They had a formula for it—efficient specialization. But they neglected the most obvious of human characteristics.
    “Man is an unspecialized animal. His body, except for its enormous brain case, is primitive. He can’t dig; he can’t run very fast; he can’t fly. But he can eat anything and he can stay alive where a goat would starve, a lizard would fry, a bird freeze. Instead of special adaptations he has general adaptability—”
    The Empire of the Great Khans was a reversion to an obsolete form—totalitarianism. Only under absolutism could the genetic experiments which bred homo proteus have been performed, for they required a total indifference to the welfare of individuals.
    Gene selection was simply an adjunct to the practices of the imperial geneticists. They made use also of artificial mutation, by radiation and through gene-selective dyes, and they practiced endocrine therapy and surgery on the immature zygote. They tailored human beings—if you could call them that—as casually as we construct buildings.
    At their height, just before the Second Genetic War, they bred over three thousand types including the hyperbrains (thirteen sorts), the almost brainless matrons, the clever and repulsively beautiful pseudo-feminine freemartins, and the neuter “mules”.
    We tend to identify the term mule with fighters, since we knew them best, but in fact, there was a type of mule for every sort of routine job in the Empire. The fighters were simply those specialized for fighting.
    And what fighters! They needed no sleep. They had three times the strength of ordinary men. There is no way to compare their endurance since they simply kept on going, like well designed machines, until disabled. Each one carried fuel—“fuel” seems