Thirty years after the coup that gave him control of the planet Terminus, an aging Mayor Hardin and his deputy, Yohan Lee, receive a delegation of four young political upstarts who aim to replace Hardin as leaders of Terminus. They sit before his desk and accept ritual cigars—homegrown, as imported tobacco is not available during the collapse of galactic civilization. Hardin compliments the only important visitor, Councilman Sef Sermak, on his recent, brilliantly scathing speech against the government’s foreign policy. Sermak replies that he speaks for most Terminus citizens. He demands that the government stop appeasing the nearby Four Kingdoms by giving them technology that strengthens them and insists that the government arm Terminus and attack the kingdoms.

Hardin points to a framed epigram on the wall: “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent” (90). He explains that, though war bolsters egos, it’s the “stupidest” way to resolve problems. Hardin stopped Anacreon’s invasion of Terminus decades earlier by contacting nearby kingdoms and warning them that Anacreon was about to acquire nuclear power from Terminus. The kingdoms united and forced Anacreon to withdraw.

Hardin thereafter carefully balanced the kingdoms’ competing interests, offering them technology—which they regard as magic and he disguises as religious ritual—that keeps them dependent on Terminus.