anywhere else, by your clumsy distorter drive,
we can follow you, and destroy any planet you choose to land on. You
would not get away from us. We can track you without any difficulty.

"We wouldn't use the bombs lightly, to be sure, because of what would
happen to Earth. And don't think that blowing up our planet would save
you, because we naturally wouldn't keep the bombs on Earth. How does
that sound to you?"

"Ridiculous," snorted Ggaran. "Impossible."

After several minutes of silent consideration, "It is an excellent
plan," said His Effulgence. "It is worthy of the thinking of The People
ourselves. You Earthlings will make very satisfactory allies. What you
request will be provided without delay. Meanwhile, I see no reason why
we cannot proceed with our discussions."

"Nor do I," consented Crownwall. "But your stooge here doesn't seem very
happy about it all."

His Effulgence wiggled his tentacles. "I'm afraid that Ggaran had
expected to take what you Earthlings have to offer without giving
anything in return. I never had any such ideas. I have not
underestimated you, you see."

"That's nice," said Crownwall graciously.

"And now," Ggaran put in, "I think it's time for you to tell us
something about how you get across light-years of space in a few hours,
without leaving any traces for us to detect." He raised a tentacle to
still Crownwall's immediate exclamation of protest. "Oh, nothing that
would give us a chance to duplicate it--just enough to _indicate_ how we
can make use of it, along with you--enough to allow us to _begin_ to
make intelligent plans to beat the claws off the Master Race."

* * * * *

After due consideration, Crownwall nodded. "I don't see why not. Well,
then, let me tell you that we don't travel in space at all. That's why I
didn't show up on any of your long-range detection instruments. Instead,
we travel in time. Surely any race that has progressed as far as your
own must know, at least theoretically, that time travel is entirely
possible. After all, we knew it, and we haven't been around nearly as
long as you have."

"We know about it," said Ffallk, "but we've always considered it
useless--and very dangerous--knowledge."

"So have we, up until the time you planted that bomb on us. Anyone who
tried to work any changes in his own past would be almost certain to end
up finding himself never having been born. So we don't do any meddling.
What we hav