part they were couched in alien and unintelligible
symbols. But there was no block. Apparently the Ryzga felt no need to
close his mind in the presence of inferior creatures....

He paused with his back to the central control panel, and studied the
interlopers with the dispassionate gaze of a scientist examining a new,
but not novel, species of insect. His thoughts seemed to click, like
metal parts of a mechanism falling into places prepared for them. The
image occurred oddly to Var, to whom such a comparison would ordinarily
have been totally strange.

"Culture: late barbarism. Handwork of high quality--good. Physically
excellent stock...." There was a complicated and incomprehensible
schemata of numbers and abstract forms. "The time: two thousand
years--more progress might have been expected, if any survivors at all
initially postulated; but this will do. The pessimists were mistaken. We
can begin again." Then, startlingly super-imposed on the cool
progression of logical thought, came a wave of raw emotion, devastating
in its force. It was a lustful image of a world once more obedient,
crawling, laboring to do the Ryzgas' will--_toward the stars, the
stars!_ The icy calculation resumed: "Immobilize these and the ones
indicated in the passage above. Then wake the rest...."

Var was staring in fascination at the Ryzga's face. It was a face formed
by the custom of unquestioned command; yet it was lined by a deeply
ingrained weariness, the signs of premature age--denied, overridden by
the driving will they had sensed a moment earlier. It was a sick man's
face.

The Ryzga's final thought clicked into place: _Decision!_ He turned
toward the switchboard behind him, reaching with practised certainty for
one spot upon it.

Neena screamed.

Between the Ryzga and the control panel a nightmare shape reared up
seven feet tall, flapping black amorphous limbs and flashing red eyes
and white fangs. The Ryzga recoiled, and the weapon in his hand came up.
There was an instantaneous glare like heat lightning, and the monster
crumpled in on itself, twitched briefly and vanished.

But in that moment a light of inspiration had flashed upon Var, and it
remained. As the Ryzga stretched out his hand again, Var acted. The
Ryzga froze, teetering off balance and almost falling, as a numbing grip
closed down on all his motor nerves.

Holding that grip, Var strode across the floor and looked straight into
the Ryzga's frantic eyes. They g