d Regis moderated his tone, but continued vehemently, "You
blame the moons in the sky. _I_ say the moons are not to blame--nor the
winds--nor the Gods. The Gods send these things to men to test their
wits and to find if they have the will to master them!"

* * * * *

The Old One's forehead ridged vertically and he said with stinging
contempt, "Is this the breed of king which men call Hastur now?"

"Man or God or Hastur, I am not too proud to plead for my people,"
retorted Regis, flushing with anger. "Never in all the history of
Darkover has a Hastur stood before one of you and begged--"

"--for the men from another world."

"--for all men on our world! Old One, I could sit and keep state in the
House of the Hasturs, and even death could not touch me until I grew
weary of living! But I preferred to learn new lives from new men. The
Terrans have something to teach even the Hasturs, and they can learn a
remedy against the trailmen's fever." He looked round at me, turning the
discussion over to me again, and I said:

"I am no alien from another world, Old One. I have been a son in your
house. Perhaps I was sent to teach you to fight destiny. I cannot
believe you are indifferent to death."

Suddenly, hardly knowing what I was going to do until I found myself on
my knees, I knelt and looked up into the quiet stern remote face of the
nonhuman:

"My father," I said, "you took a dying man and a dying child from a
burning plane. Even those of their own kind might have stripped their
corpses and left them to die. You saved the child, fostered him and
treated him as a son. When he reached an age to be unhappy with you, you
let a dozen of your people risk their lives to take him to his own. You
cannot ask me to believe that you are indifferent to the death of a
million of my people, when the fate of one could stir your pity!"

* * * * *

There was a moment's silence. Finally the Old One said,
"Indifferent--no. But helpless. My people die when they leave the
mountains. The air is too rich for them. The food is wrong. The light
blinds and tortures them. Can I send them to suffer and die, those
people who call me father?"

And a memory, buried all my life, suddenly surfaced. I said urgently,
"Father, listen. In the world I live in now, I am called a wise man. You
need not believe me, but listen; I know your people, they are my people.
I remember when I left you,