e rediscovery of proto-man's secret--rule by one
man.

Garr Symm, absolute dictator of the galaxy, if he played his hand right.

Garr Symm sat there for a long time, dreaming of power as no man before
him on any world had ever dreamed of power....

* * * * *

Vardin rushed into the airlock of the Canopusian freighter in a state of
excitement. At last they had given her something to do, and she had been
successful at the outset. Specifically, Ramsey and the beautiful woman
had given her a scintillation-counter and told her to prowl among the
wrecks with it while they worked on the control board of the freighter,
which the beautiful woman had named _Enterprise_.

"I found it!" Vardin cried. "I found it!"

She led a sceptical Margot Dennison outside while Ramsey continued
working on the _Enterprise_. The two girls walked swiftly through the
darkness between the wrecks. By this time they knew every foot of the
Graveyard.

"There," Vardin said. "You see?"

The scintillation counter was clicking and blinking. Margot smiled and
went to work with a portable mechanical arm and a leaded bottle. In ten
minutes, she had the slow-implosion capsule out of the hopper of a
battered old Aldebaranese cargo ship.

"I never saw one of those mechanical arms working before," Vardin said.

Margot smiled. She was delighted with the timid Vegan girl, with the
cold night, with the way the wind blew across the Graveyard, with
everything. They had their fuel. Tomorrow night the _Enterprise_ would
be ready for its dash into hyper-space. In thirty-six hours she might
have her hands on the most valuable find in the history of mankind....

When they returned to the _Enterprise_, she let Ramsey kiss her and
tried to slip the telepathic tentacles of her mind behind his guard--

Lewd libidinous fantasies, X stands for nothing for nothing for nothing,
XXX--she got nowhere.

What was X? What was Ramsey's secret? Margot did not know, and wondered
if she would ever find out.

She smiled, reading Vardin's mind. For Vardin was thinking: it must be
so wonderful to have beauty such as she has, to melt the wills of strong
handsome men such as Ramsey. It must be truly wonderful.

For the first twenty-eight years of her life, Margot Dennison would have
agreed, would have delighted in her own beauty. She still did, to a
point. But beyond that point, she could dream only of proto-man and his
secret.

Beauty or power?