"It's not you personally I'm worried about."

"I think in some ways we'd do better and in others worse."

"That's not really specific enough to build a ship on."

"We'd prefer to colonize an empty planet."

"There are more of those anyway. Okay. I'll talk to the ship manufacturers about how much we can pick up the pace."

Smile.

He leaves. He adds an appropriately non-threatening description of Melkor's adventures in Voa to the summary for the Tapai.

Gosh. So does Melkor have, like, any friends or anything who could be causing the ongoing rash problem?

"Crossed my mind. He had servants, four thousand years ago. He could have been in contact with them; I don't see how they could have gotten here but under the circumstances we probably shouldn't rule it out."

"Once he posed as an Elf, if there were some sort of publicized event in which people were to come into contact with Elves..."

" - to draw them out? We could do that. We should arrange to be prepared to arrest them, first, but once we are - might be dangerous for attendees -"

"We could populate the event with criminals, maybe."

Shiver. Sigh. "Yes."

"...it could be some sort of going-away party where you take them off our hands, if you like."

"That would help. Thank you."

"You're welcome, I'll have some picked out we don't mind being rid of."

"I appreciate it."

He writes the Valar. 

He explains this to his people. It's not popular. "It wouldn't, really, be much better if they were 'volunteers'," he says, "the problem is people dying at all and if there's an agent of Melkor's loose on the world -"

          "Your grace, it's that - this keeps happening. We are participating in atrocity after atrocity because none of the alternatives look any better - taking babies away from their parents because they will otherwise die, ignoring horrible wrongs because it'll give us more political leverage to focus on different horrible wrongs, all these compromises we would have never dreamed of agreeing to a year ago - populating an event with innocent people who will likely die, for the sake of taking someone else prisoner - I don't trust myself to stop compromising in the right place."

"Well," says Maitimo, "I trust myself to stop compromising in the right place."

This time he accepts peoples' resignations. 

They plan the event.

They're not innocent people! They are guilty of various things. They will be lining up to shake hands and if they don't break out in a rash they will then really go wherever the Elves care to take them. Actually, the Elves can keep any survivors even if they do get rashy.

The Elf definition of 'innocent people' encompasses a lot of people who've broken local law. All of them, even, maybe.

He explains to the Valar that if things are as they look, and Melkor has an ally on the terrible planet, then Melkor should be assumed to also have a way to talk to this ally, and therefore tipping off Melkor about this would ruin it, but they need a couple Valar to make an arrest, so maybe the Valar can come up with a reason those people are absent from Melkor's hearings which isn't true, and then say it to Melkor.

The Valar aren't sure about that. 

He explains it again with smaller words. 

"Oh," Nienna says, "we can all communicate instantaneously with all of the other Ainur, we share as much of ourselves as we wish with them and nearly everyone leaves their senses open to everyone else. So of course Melkor can communicate with his old allies on Endorë."

"I see," he says. "Thank you so much for mentioning that. Can Melkor see this conversation that we are having right now?"

"No, you petitioned for a private audience so it's just me now. He might wonder why it was private, though."

He takes a deep breath. "All right. Let me try to explain again -"

Eventually Tulkas and Oromë agree to go back to the terrible planet to help with arresting someone, and to not tell Melkor they're doing that. 

Criminals are lined up! The blue who picked them thoughtfully selected ones who don't have children, she doesn't want the Elves to be too upset.

That really is very thoughtful. He goes. He doesn't want to die but neither do the criminals, now, do they. He tracks the movements of all his people in the room through all of their eyes.

People start to get a rash.

They are upset about that!

And there's an Elf in the corner who is also in that other corner, and only one of them letting him see through their eyes - Oromë -

Yes, we noticed.

And then everything goes blindingly, searingly white.