The metabaron continues to rant about the hypocrisy of the human race. He compares humans to "gords" , deserters , and "pests covered with scales" . He tells the audience that he assisted in the extermination of "the gords," "desert people covered with stinky scales," and "fragrant aquatic beings," all of which are "too true" to be true. He then proceeds to tell the audience how much money there is in the galaxy, and how the pthaean galaxy is "of equal strength" to the galaxy of humans. He says that if the empire decides to exterminate humans, they will have to do so before they can do so on planets populated with pthagoreans . If they decide to kill humans, he says, they'll have to kill the metabarons as well. He also says that he's going to continue the story the next day. He knows that steelhead will win because if he had a son, he wouldn't have been born.