interest. Psychology—some of its rules are basic. For though It was transuranic, unhuman, non-normal, yet even so it was also very young, and could be distracted by the right kind of toy just as a young child can be. That moment of distraction gave us our chance."

Cubbison beamed. "You've saved the Station, you three! I'll report to New York at once. We shall be careful in future to avoid repetition of this danger. But Transuranic Station's work can go on, thanks to your heroism."

Zarias laughed. He laughed, but we saw now that there were tears in his eyes and running down his cheeks.

"We are heroes, yes," he said. "We are heroes, because we have killed a baby."

His voice lashed bitterly. "For It was just a baby, a baby trying to live and grow up in a wholly alien and hostile world. And we did it to death! Curse all of us for it! What are we but a lot of mucky little apes, strutting around now because we murdered something that could have been bigger than ourselves? It wasn't human, it wasn't of our cosmos, but it was clean and passionless and shining, and it might have made this whole universe one vast and wonderful mind and body! But it wasn't human so we had to kill it—we heroes!"

He put his face in his hands and sat down blindly in a corner.

Varez looked at him. "He was too many times under Its influence," he murmured. "He'll get over it. I—I think I know how he feels."

I thought I knew, too. That burst of wonder and delight at Varez' "toy," that hurt, bewildered grief of the last moment—they were shaking me, too.

Maybe Zarias was right. Maybe we had killed something that could have been bigger and finer than humanity. But still, this isn't a transuranic universe. It was the stranger here, not we.

And, I have thought since, maybe it was only a forerunner. Beyond our old range of elements, the potentialities of the transuranic realms still beckon man to create. Perhaps, someday, another It will be born thus which will not die, but will live on after man's day is finished, as his strange successor and son.

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