iums would be believed,
even if they all told, simultaneously, exactly the same story. The
multi-mind weakened suddenly and Hilton snapped it back to Ardry.

Beverly was almost in collapse. The other girls were white, shaken and
trembling. Hilton himself, strong and rugged as he was, felt as though
he had done two weeks of hard labor on a rock-pile. He glanced
questioningly at Larry.

"Point six three eight seconds, sir," the Omans said, holding up a
millisecond timer.

"How do you explain _that_?" Karns demanded.

"I'm afraid it means that without Oman backing we're out of luck."

* * * * *

Hilton had other ideas, but he did not voice any of them until the
following day, when he was rested and had Larry alone.

"So carbon-based brains can't take it. One second of that stuff would
have killed all eight of us. Why? The Masters had the same kind of
brains we have."

"I don't know, sir. It's something completely new. No Master, or group
of Masters, ever generated such a force as that. I can scarcely believe
such power possible, even though I have felt it twice. It may be that
over the generations your individual powers, never united or controlled,
have developed so strength that no human can handle them in fusion."

"And none of us ever knew anything about any of them. I've been doing a
lot of thinking. The Masters had qualities and abilities now unknown to
any of us. How come? You Omans--and the Stretts, too--think we're
descendants of the Masters. Maybe we are. You think they came originally
from Arth--Earth or Terra--to Ardu. That'd account for our legends of
Mu, Atlantis and so on. Since Ardu was within peyondix range of Strett,
the Stretts attacked it. They killed all the Masters, they thought, and
made the planet uninhabitable for any kind of life, even their own. But
one shipload of Masters escaped and came here to Ardry--far beyond
peyondix range. They stayed here for a long time. Then, for some reason
or other--which may be someplace in their records--they left here, fully
intending to come back. Do any of you Omans know why they left? Or where
they went?"

"No, sir. We can read only the simplest of the Masters' records. They
arranged our brains that way, sir."

"I know. They're the type. However, I suspect now that your thinking is
reversed. Let's turn it around. Say the Masters didn't come from Terra,
but from some other planet. Say that they left here because they we