The last threat to the Great Ships has been defeated. The Concord members are faced with a hard choice; they must either bring the humans into the Concord or use their still superior space-going capacities to isolate the humans in the systems they now occupy. The only possible third alternative, extermination of the human populations on the planets, is now impossible because of the human weapons on the planets. Even bombardment with asteroids would probably fail or render the planets uninhabitable and unexploitable.
But isolating the human populations will just delay the inevitable. Humans will build their own starships and come out to meet and perhaps conquer their former masters. Induction of the humans into the Concord is the only sane alternative.
