te of
affairs for poor old Earth!_

_Let me have that line from the Globate Credo again:_ They came from the
sky before our grandfathers were born, to a world torn by war; they
settled our differences and raised us from the slime_--there's a bitter
laugh, gentlemen_--giving us freedom. All we have we owe to the globes.
_There's the whole tale in a nutshell. God!_

_Orbish language, Orbuary, Orbsday--nice job they did of infiltrating. I
wonder what books they left you. I'd like a look at your father's
library. Alice in Wonderland, I suppose, or Black Beauty, or something
equally advanced._

_Now listen, lads, and you, Lady Nirea. I came from a world that may
have had its rugged spots, but it was heaven and Utopia compared with
this one. You disinterred me at the damndest most vital moment of your
history, and probably of Earth's as well--we've had conquerors aplenty,
but always of this world, not from out of it. It seems to me that if
your rebellion fails, you're due for worse treatment than ever. You've
got to win, and win fast. Any entity that has atomic weapons is going to
be no easy mark, and the gentry have guns. How about you people? Ten?
Ten guns altogether? Oohh...._

_See here. That big machine over there is a--well, that's hopeless. I'll
try to break this down in one-syllable words. Orbish words, I hope._

_That big thing sends up rays like beams of sunlight but of different
intensity, color, wave length, et cetera--it sends up beams that
counteract, I mean work against, destroy, other beams. Now the buttons
are held up there by forces in diamonds, taken out by these globes of
yours and used to hold up their homes, ships, saucers, buttons. The
beams from that big thing will destroy the diamond beams and make the
buttons fall._

_There's just one thing. We have to get the machine, the thing, out of
this cave and onto the surface of the earth. You catch my meaning? It
has to have sky above it before it can work against the button-beams.
Yes, much like your globes' telepathy (what a word to survive, when
"glass" and "electricity" didn't) and hypnosis fails when rock gets in
the way._

_Can you get it to the surface? Talk it over, Mink. It can give you
plenty of help ... if you can get it up there. I'll just sit here, if
it's okay with you, and let my imagination boggle at what you've told
me._

_I have the most confounded urgent feeling that this is a visit I'm
making in a time machine, and that tomorro