or considerable distances." X-rays, thought Wade. "Great
changes had been wrought. Already they had developed startling
intelligence, and were able to understand the scheme of their Masters.
Their feet and hands were being modified rapidly, and their vocal
apparatus was changing. Their jaws shortened, their chins developed, the
nose retreated.

"Generation after generation the process went on, while the Deathless
Ancient Ones worked with their helpers, for soon my race was a real
helping organization.

"But it was done. The successful arousing of true love-emotion followed,
and the unhappy days were gone. Quickly development followed. In five
thousand years the new race had outstripped the Ancient Masters, and
they passed, voluntarily, willingly joining in oblivion the millions who
had died before.

"Since then our own race has risen, it has been but a short thousand
years, a thousand years of work, and hope, and continuous improvement
for us, continual accomplishment on which we can look, and a living hope
to which we could look with raised heads, and smiling faces.

"Then our hope died, as this menace came. Do you see what you and your
world was meant to us, Man of Earth?" Zezdon Afthen raised his dark eyes
to the terrestrian with a look in their depths that made Wade
involuntarily resolve that Thet and all Thessians should be promptly
consigned to that limbo of forgotten things where they belonged.

Chapter VII

WORLD 3769-37,478,326,894,6, TALSO

Wade sat staring moodily at the screen for some time, while Zezdon
Afthen, sunk in his own reveries, continued.

"Our race was too highly psychic, and too little mechanically curious.
We learned too little of the world about, and too much of our own
processes. We are a peaceful race, for, while you and the Ancient
Masters learned the rule of existence in a world of strife, where only
the fittest, the best fighters survived, we learned life in a carefully
tended world, where the Ancient Masters taught us to live, where the one
whose social instincts were best developed, where he who would most help
the others, and the race, was permitted to live. Is it not natural that
our race will not fight among themselves? We are careful to suppress
tendencies toward criminality and struggle. The criminal and the maniac,
or those who are permanently incurable as determined by careful
examination, are 'removed' as the Leaders put it. Lethal gas.

"At any rate, we know s