{{Pause=2}} CHAPTER 13 {{PAUSE=1}}Greater Dangers {{Pause=2}} "Lya, Do you know which would be the arms that put an end to man?" "At first I will tell you that the most dangerous weapon that you face is the hate among your own selves. This slowly destroys the psyche most brilliantly. Hate is the generator of much of the ills that actually assault your society. But as you asked me about weapons of another type I will try to explain something to satisfy your knowledge. To, the inhabitants of INXTRIA, we worry profoundly about the chemical threat, weapons that have been used without any provocation and which scarcely leave a palpable trace on the Earth. Your two great powers are selling chemical weapons with a profusion never seen before. It is as if your own world was in great haste to annihilate itself. Today in your universities and even your schools, any student who is in possession of an adequate formula can use chemical weapons to attack the nervous system of the human being and could destroy the neurons of any living being, or simply terminate the vegetable life of your whole civilization. Moreover, the waters of the rivers can also be contaminated as a form of attack by one civilization on another, and very few times can the origin be detected. In time you will find that a still worse form of degeneration in your own race is attacking the primordial particles of your own DNA, and with a little luck will convert you into a race of mutants... This happens with a certain frequency in your Universe. The indiscriminate use of chemical agents produces cellular degeneration already in your skin, in the bloodstream, or at local levels also and provokes heart attacks and cerebral paralysis. You are actually experimenting with gases that totally paralyze the nervous system of the whole living being, with gases or liquids that are soluble in air or water. The chemical weapons for their silence and for being difficult to detect will soon be the ones that are used most frequently. They are used to sabotage, to imprison, to corrupt, destroy, etc... "Will this occur soon?' "Professor", she said looking at me as a mind of substance, "I am moved that you ask me if this will occur soon when I have told you that, and you give the impression that your time being really valuable, it has not been of sufficient importance to you... What does soon signify to you? This is occurring in your world already. The word pronto is already applicable today. You have already used chemical agents in your second world war but today they are more... as they say, stylized. The human being himself has absolutely no idea of his high degree of bellicosity and toward where he is taking this. He has no consciousness of his short-lived steps, and this, thanks to his proposed annihilation, will be accelerated perhaps for your own civilization, dying at the hands of your own brothers... " "Why?" "Because even when the human being possesses the capacity for reflection he is always preponderantly on the offensive, disposed to repel any aggression at whatever cost. The human being of your world is full of fear, fear of living, of suffering, of dying there since not only are bringing an end to those who have the misfortune of coming in contact with them, but also to those who still are not born. Not only the attacked will succumb, but also the attacker who has contact with those weapons will die. For such the aggressor and the victim are sentenced to suffer the same effects by those who have developed the chemical weapons. {{PAUSE=2}}