could know who passed the sentence, or by whom it was executed."
"And have you," I asked, "no apostates, as you have no traitors?"
"No," he said. "In the first place, none who has lived among us could endure to fall into the ordinary Martial life. Secondly, the foundations of our simple creed are so clear, so capable of being made apparent to every one, that none once familiar with the evidences can well cease to believe them."
Here he paused, and I asked, "How is it possible that the means you employ to punish those who have wronged you should not, in some cases at least, indicate the person who has employed them?"
"Because," he said, "the means of vengeance are not corporeal; the agency does not in the least resemble any with which our countrymen, or apparently your race on Earth, are acquainted. A traitor would be found dead with no sign of suffering or injury, and the physician would pronounce that he had died of apoplexy or heart disease. A persecutor, or one who had unpardonably wronged any of the Children of the Star, might go mad, might fling himself from a precipice, might be visited with the most terrible series of calamities, all natural in their character, all distinctly traceable to natural causes, but astonishing and even apparently supernatural in their accumulation, and often in their immediate appropriateness to the character of his offence. Our neighbours would, of course, destroy the avenger, if they could find him out—would attempt to exterminate our society, could they prove its agency."
"But surely your countrymen must either disbelieve
