nute larger. They were able, after some hours, to make out the
outlines of what had once been continents, to see the shadows in valleys
which had once held the oceans of Earth....

And always, as they stared and literally willed the cubes which piloted
and were the motive power of the aircars to speed and more speed, that
marvelous display of interplanetary fireworks which had aroused the
concern of Sarka the Second.

What were those lights? Whence did they emanate? Sarka the Second had
said that they came from Mars, yet Mars was invisible to those in the
speeding aircars, which argued that it was hidden behind the Earth.
There was no way of knowing how close it was to the home of these rebels
of Dalis' Gens.

And ever, as they flashed forward, Sarka was recalling that vague hint
on the lips of Jaska, to the effect that Luar, for all her sovereignty
of the Moon, might be, nonetheless, a native of the Earth. But....

How? Why? When? There were no answers to any of the questions yet. If
she were a native of Earth, how had she reached the Moon? When had she
been sent there? Who was she? Her name, Luar, was a strange one, and
Sarka studied it for many minutes, rolling the odd syllables of it over
his tongue, wondering where, on the Earth, he had heard names, or words,
similar to it. This produced no result, until he tried substituting
various letters; then, again, adding various letters. When he achieved a
certain result at last, he gasped, and his brain was a-whirl.

* * * * *

Luar, by the addition of the letter _n_, between the _u_ and the _a_,
became Lunar, meaning "of the Moon!" Yet Lunar was unmistakably a word
derived from the language of the Earth! It was possible, of course, that
this was mere coincidence; but, taken in connection with the suspicions
of Jaska, and the incontrovertible fact that Luar resembled people of
the Earth, Sarka did not believe in this particular whim of coincidence.

Who was Luar?

His mind went back to the clucking sounds which, among the Gnomes of the
Moon, passed for speech. He pondered anew. He shaped his lips, as nearly
as possible, to make the clucking sounds he had heard, and discovered
that it was very difficult to manage the letter _n_!

The conclusion was inescapable: This woman, Luar, had once been _Lunar_,
the _n_, down the centuries, being dropped because difficult for the
Gnomes to pronounce.

"Yes, Jaska," he said suddenly, "somewhere