mall in themselves,
but adding up to complete strangeness of aspect, I would find in time.

"That is Holaf," murmured Nokomee in Korean to me. "He is a chief among
us now, since the fall of our strength. He is good, but young and always
too impetuous. He needs long experience, and it looks as if he would get
it, now."

"You have more than one leader?" I asked.

"We have three chiefs left to us, who rule their families--their clans.
We have but one real leader. He is an old wise man left us by good
fortune. He is our lone scientist. The chiefs of the clans listen to the
leader, but they argue. Things look bad for us all."

"You are too few to reconquer the city?"

"Too few, yes. And time plays against us, for with the coming of the
ships from our home planet--that I should call that tyrant's nest
home!--there will be even more of the Schrees, then. We are a lost
people now. There is no hope, eventually we will be hunted down as you
earthmen will be hunted down, like animals. Made into slaves--and worse
than slaves. You will learn what I mean when next you see your three
friends."

It was too much for me. I asked:

"Why don't you leave this place, and go on to another?"

"On your little world? It is not big enough to hide ourselves from them.
And we have lost our ships, we cannot get others."

"You think that they mean to conquer our whole planet?"

"In time they will do so. Not yet, but when they are many, they will
spread, slaughter all who fight them, and enslave all who do not. They
are very terrible creatures, not men at all, you know."

"Not like you and I?"

"Not at all. You will see, soon. Hurry, it is late, and we have council
to attend."

There was a deep passion in her words, quick and sharp and strange on
her lips as they were, a passion of anger and hopeless effort that
somehow roused me into desire to help her and these strange people of
hers. Too, if what she said was true, these raiders who had despoiled
her people would in time engulf the world with a war of conquest, even
if they were less able to defeat us than she estimated. I resolved to
make the most of this opportunity to learn the worst of this hidden
threat to men everywhere. I felt a kinship with Nokomee and her friend,
silent and alert beside me, and I realized it could well be that I had
in my hands the future of mankind, and that it behooved me not to let it
fall through carelessness.

Lapsed now into silence, we reached th