enemy called the All of the Universe—to know why the conquerors had to use a semantic device to define their superiority. The Almost-men were a liberty-loving society. Their government decrees and their religious poetry abounded with vivid words of freedom. They could not have maintained an integrated social soul and enslaved a culture of their peers; therefore, they had to invent a verbal technique for reducing man to the status of a savage.

"As we have always done ourselves," Pendillo told Lanny when he first became aware of the inconsistency as a child. "But don't condemn the enemy for it, my son. Words have the peculiar habit of becoming anything we want them to be. If we set our minds to it, we can make anything true. The Almost-men are not merely alien invaders; they are like man himself—the most tragic distortion of our worst traits. Someday we shall make war on them, yes, but before we do we must learn how to conquer ourselves."

Early in the afternoon the power cells in the barge were exhausted. Gill drove the ship up on a desolate beach, at the place where Monterey had once stood. Nothing survived but an occasional piece of debris, buried in the drifted sand, for Monterey, close to a military camp, had been heavily bombed by the invaders.

"We must find a place to camp," Pendillo advised. "I don't believe either Tak Laleen or I have the strength to go any farther today."

They found it necessary to hike eight miles north of Monterey before they were beyond the area of total destruction. The ruins, scattered among the encroaching trees, became recognizable as skeletal relics of things that might once have been homes. They found one frame cottage still whole because it had been built close to a hillside. The battered walls would provide shelter for Pendillo and the missionary. Further, the house had a stone fireplace where they could cook their food, and close by a shallow spring bubbled from the dark earth.

Gill and Lanny trapped a deer and carried the carcass back to the cottage. Both Tak Laleen and Pendillo were struggling to make a fire. Lanny took over the chore and in seconds flames leaped through the dead brush heaped on the hearth. It had always puzzled him that Pendillo could have taught him the techniques, and still not be able to make the fire himself. Tak Laleen was just as helpless. Without their machines the Almost-men were nothing: again and again that became apparent.

Gill stripped off the deer hide carefully so it could be made into a second jacket for 

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