00100			                   A MATTER OF JUDGEMENT

00200		For the first few hundred years after the Earthmen
00300	developed the faster-than-light  drive,  their  government  was
00400	able to keep their expansion under control, and, in particular,
00500	to regulate their intercourse with  less  advanced  intelligent
00600	life  forms.   However,  the establishment of remote and rarely
00700	visited colonies with frankly experimental social systems which
00800	in  turn spawned further colonies when diverging views appeared
00900	among the colonists led to a great variety of systems.   A  few
01000	of  these  took  on a definitely predatory form with respect to
01100	other civilizations which was only finally halted when
01200	the  Earthmen accepted the Galactic Rule a few centuries later.
01300	The most predatory of the lot were the New  Conquistadores  who
01400	modelled  themselves  on  tales  of  a  military  invasion of a
01500	continent  on  their  own  planet  newly  discovered   by     a
01600	technically more advanced society of the time.
01700	
01800		Naturally,  it  was  some time before they ran across a
01900	planet that even remotely fitted  their  idea  of  a  potential
02000	conquest  since life forms typically spend a very small part of
02100	their histories between the invention of fire and the invention
02200	of inter-stellar travel.  What they actually found was a planet
02300	of the Judges in the middle of a ten  thousand  year  cycle  of
02400	non-mechanical civilization.  The result of this encounter is
02500	worth recounting.
02600	
02700		Our information about this comes from the report of a
02800	young xenologist who accompanied the expedition as a gesture
02900	of compliance with the rule that native populations be treated