wn upward. He must have thought faster than the others, because he
put on an air-helmet and dived into this locker where he hid under a
pile of gear, fixing things so that he could see out through the
transparent arenak of the wall. No sooner was he hidden that the front
end of the ship went up in a blaze of light, in spite of their ray
screens going full blast. They were up so high by that time that when
the bow was burned off the other three fainted from lack of air. Then
their generators went out, and pretty soon two peculiar-looking
strangers entered. They were wearing vacuum suits and were very short
and stocky, giving the impression of enormous strength. They brought an
educator of their own with them and read the brains of the three men.
Then they dropped the ship a few thousand feet and revived the three
with a drink of something out of a flask."

"Must have been different from the kind handled by most booties I know,
then. The stuff we've been getting lately would make a man more
unconscious than ever."

"Some powerful drug, probably, but the Osnomian didn't know anything
about it. After the men were revived, the strangers, apparently from
sheer cruelty and love of torturing their victims, informed them in the
Osnomian language that they were from another world, on the far edge of
the Galaxy. They even told them, knowing that the Osnomians knew nothing
of astronomy, exactly where they were from. Then they went on to say
that they wanted the entire green system for themselves, and that in
something like two years of our time they were going to wipe out all the
present inhabitants of the system and take it over, as a base for
further operations. After that they amused themselves by describing
exactly the kinds of death and destruction they were going to use. They
described most of it in great detail. It's too involved to tell you
about now, but they've got rays, generators, and screens that even the
Osnomians never heard of. And of course they've got intra-atomic energy
the same as we have. After telling them all this and watching them
suffer, they put a machine on their heads and they dropped dead. That's
probably what disintegrated their brains. Then they looked the ship over
rather casually, as though they didn't see anything they were interested
in; crippled the motors; and went away. The vessel was then released,
and crashed. This man, of course, was killed by the fall. I buried the
men--I didn't want anybo