s that were valueless. There was comparatively little of
the first, much of the second. Kygpton itself was a world as large as
your entire solar system, with a diameter roughly of four billion miles.
Our ancestors knew that Kygpton was dying, that the store of our most
precious element Sthalreh was dwindling. But already our ancestors had
mastered the forces of our universe, had made inventions that are beyond
your understanding, had explored the limits of our universe in
space-cars that were propelled by the free energies in space and by the
attracting-repelling influences of stars.

"The metal inhabitants of Kygpton employed every invention they knew to
accomplish an engineering miracle that makes your bridges and mines seem
but the puny efforts of a gnat. They blasted all the remaining ores of
Sthalreh from the surface and interior of Kygpton and refined them. Then
they created a gigantic vacuum, a dead-field in space a hundred million
miles away from their world. The dead-field was controlled from Kygpton
by atomic-projectors, energy-absorbers, gravitation-nullifiers and
cosmotels, range-regulators, and a host of other inventions.

"As fast as it was mined and extracted, the Sthalreh metal was
vaporized, shot into the dead-field by interstellar rays, and solidified
there along an invisible framework which we projected. In a decade of
our time, we had pillaged Kygpton of every particle of Sthalreh. And
then in our skies hung an artificial world, a manufactured sphere, a
giant new planet, the world you yourself are now on--Xlarbti!

* * * * *

"We did not create a solid globe. We left chambers, tunnels,
passageways, storerooms throughout it or piercing it from surface to
surface. Thus, even as Xlarbti was being created, we provided for
everything that we needed or could need--experimental laboratories,
sub-surface vaults, chambers for the innumerable huge ray dynamos,
energy storage batteries, and other apparatus which we required.

"And when all was ready, we transferred by space-cars and by atomic
individuation all our necessities from Kygpton to the artificial world
Xlarbti. And when everything was prepared, we destroyed the dead-field
by duplicate control from Xlarbti, turned our repulsion-power on full
against the now useless and dying giant world Kygpton, and swung upon
our path.

"But our whole universe is incredibly old. It was mature before ever
your young suns flamed out