, Dolly? Uh-uh, far be it from such." Bernadine came
lithely to her feet. She glanced at her own taut, trim abdomen; upon
which a micrometrically-precise topographical mapping job might have
revealed an otherwise imperceptible bulge. "Just you wait until Junior
arrives and I'll show you how to _really_ spoil a baby. Besides, what's
the hurry?"

"He needs his supper. Vitamins and minerals and hard radiations and
things, and then he's going to bed. I don't approve of this no-sleep
business. So run along, both of you, until tomorrow."

XII

As has been said, the Stretts were working, with all the intensity of
their monstrous but tremendously capable minds, upon their Great Plan;
which was, basically, to conquer and either enslave or destroy every
other intelligent race throughout all the length, breadth, and thickness
of total space. To that end each individual Strett had to become
invulnerable and immortal.

Wherefore, in the inconceivably remote past, there had been put into
effect a program of selective breeding and of carefully-calculated
treatments. It was mathematically certain that this program would result
in a race of beings of pure force--beings having no material
constituents remaining whatever.

Under those hellish treatments billions upon billions of Stretts had
died. But the few remaining thousands had almost reached their sublime
goal. In a few more hundreds of thousands of years perfection would be
reached. The few surviving hundreds of perfect beings could and would
multiply to any desired number in practically no time at all.

Hilton and his seven fellow-workers had perceived all this in their one
and only study of the planet Strett, and every other Ardan had been
completely informed.

A dozen or so Strett Lords of Thought, male and female, were floating
about in the atmosphere--which was not air--of their Assembly Hall. Their
heads were globes of ball lightning. Inside them could be seen quite
plainly the intricate convolutions of immense, less-than-half-material
brains, shot through and through with rods and pencils and shapes of
pure, scintillating force.

And the bodies! Or, rather, each horrendous brain had a few partially
material appendages and appurtenances recognizable as bodily organs.
There were no mouths, no ears, no eyes, no noses or nostrils, no lungs,
no legs or arms. There were, however, hearts. Some partially material
ichor flowed through those living-fire-outlined tubes