I'll keep in touch with you through the ethero-radio," he lifted his left arm exposing the watch-like instrument on his wrist.

The Panadur lifted his great beryl eyes to the tall Terran and telepathed softly, "You don't expect me to agree to that!"

"No," Bill smiled, "it was the expression of a hope. But tell me this, if as I expect, there's strife, what can you hope to add in my favor that would be as important as your being safe in the ship, were I to die?"

Freml didn't answer right away. It was not hesitation, Bill knew that, but the Panadur had blanked his mind. There were things they didn't impart whenever they touched on secrets of his race. Then—

"A weapon you do not have!" He seemed to consider the next thought before he telepathed:

"You know my race can store the accumulative power of radiant energy, and direct it at will.... It's in the legends ... that's how we saved the first Earthmen who trod Europa."

They were in the very heart of the silent city now, and the lofty domes and exaggerated spires swam in the glaucous dusk that was Saturn's eternal day. Overhead great stars blazed like flaming roses, and the glory of the rings was a spangled ocean of glowing jewels, shimmering in patternless rhythms of color. Their sense of reality drained away as the full impact of its dissolving magic gripped their minds.

At last they stood before the portals of the great building whose lofty tower was the city's dominant note. For here the vibrations had led them, vibrations of life—dormant, helpless—and something else too.

Their senses preternaturally alert weapons ready, they exchanged one final look, then Bill Nardon pushed the great portal before him, and it swung silently inwards. And then the great stars, the wheeling moons, the glorious rings that poured down enchantment, were forgotten before the sight that gripped them as they stepped inside. For on an infinite series of tiers that filled the lofty immensity of the room lay inert beings.

Row upon endless row of creatures that to all appearances could have been highly evolved Terrans, except for an exaggerated refinement of features, an evident fragility of bodies, as if evolved almost to the very brink of decadence. Their marmoreal flesh had the cold whiteness of death, and their hair had grown until it spread in great festoons of yellow and black and silver grey. A fine, 

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