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or plotting.
    But how was it we did not know they were there?
    The fault was partly ours – Canopus. As for Sirius, our relations continued to be formally correct: exchanges of information took place between the Colonial Services on the mother planets. At the local Rohandan or Shikastan level, they did not behave worse than we had expected, considering the much lower level of their Empire. But it
is
this lower level of the Sirian Empire which is the key to this and other problems of Rohanda/Shikasta; and my understanding of it is different now. It must be remembered that we servants of Canopus are also in the process of evolution, and our understandings of situations change as we do. [See 
History of the Sirian Empire.
]
    In short, we were not thinking much of Shammat at all. It is easy now to say we were mistaken. Puttiora itself was concerned, or so it seemed, to keep well out of our way: the alliance between the Empire of Sirius and the CanopeanEmpire was not to be taken lightly! Throughout our part of the galaxy there was peace, there was harmonious development, and no one challenged us. Why should they? Seldom has the galaxy seen such a blaze of accomplishment, such a long period without any war at all.
    Perhaps it is the fault of the species who thrive in peace, mutual help, aspirations for more of the same – to forget that outside these borders dwell very different types of mind, feeding on different fuel. It is not that Canopus did not guard itself from the vile Puttiora emanations, that we did not keep ourselves informed about that revolting empire, which dismayed us more because it could only remind us of our earlier, less pleasant stages of development – it was not that we were negligent in that. But Puttiora did not challenge us anywhere else – so why on Rohanda?
    And so we did not take Shammat enough into account. That Puttiora should allow an outpost on a planet all rock and desert had always seemed to us inexplicable, though the rumours did come that Shammat had been colonized by criminals fleeing from Puttiora, that Puttiora had ignored them until it was too late. We had no idea at all of how Shammat was sucking and draining sources of nourishment everywhere they could be found, of how it built itself up, a thief getting fat on its loot. When Shammat was already a successful pirate state, we still thought of it as a disgraceful but unimportant appendage to the terrible but fortunately far-distant Puttiora.
    And what of the Giants, that alert, intelligent species who had everything on Rohanda under their control?
    Again, we believe that this is a question of benign and nurturing minds not being able to credit the reality of types of mind keyed to theft and destruction. Colony 10 had never been anything but a place of fruitful cooperation, and as I have said, they are peculiarly well adapted to harmonious symbiosis with others. And on Rohanda they had not experienced setback and threat. We now believe it is a disadvantage to allow too much prosperity, ease of development – and on none of our other colonies have we again beensatisfied with an easy triumphant growth. We have always inbuilt a certain amount of stress, of danger.
    But suppose there had never been a disaster? Probably no one would ever have known that Shammat was on Rohanda … for Shammat can succeed only where there is disequilibrium, harm, dismay.
    We had very little notice of the crisis. There was no reason to expect it. But the balances of Canopus and her System were suddenly not right. We had to find out what was wrong and very quickly. We did. It was Rohanda. She was out of phase, and rapidly worsening. The Lock was weakening. There were shifts in the balance of the forces from inside the body of Rohanda. These answered a shift – and now we had to look outwards, away from Rohanda – in the balances of powers elsewhere, among the stars who were holding us, Canopus, in a web of interacting currents with our