"We have excellent communications. We thank your military for its assistance with the submarine." "A pleasure. And we thank you and your people for saving us when we went flying." "Mutuality of effort," Gizl said. "I'll admit a dilemma ensued when the submarine attacked. But our obligation to safeguard human lives outweighed the other alternative--escape to the safety of space. Now suppose we have our conference. You, Major, represent Earth. I, Rezar, represent the survivors of Gorel-zed. Agreed?" "Rezar?" Don said. "I thought your name was Gizl. And what's Gorel-zed?" "Little Marie Bendy called me Gizl," Rezar said. "She couldn't pronounce Gorel-zed. I'm afraid I haven't been entirely candid with you about a number of things. But I think I know you better now. I heard your conversation with Foghorn Frank." Don smiled. "Do you mean you've been listening in ever since I strapped on the transceiver?" "Oh, yes," Rezar said. "So recapitulation is unnecessary. But we Gizls, so-called, are still a mystery to you, of course. I suppose you'd like some background. Where from, where to, when, and all that." "I certainly would," Don said. "So would everybody else, I imagine, especially King Hector here, and Mr. Fogarty." "By all means let us communicate on the highest level," Rezar said. "First, where from, eh?" "Right. Are you listening, Mr. Secretary?" "I sure am," Fogarty said. "What's more, son, you're being piped directly into the White House--and a few other places." "Good," Rezar said. "Now marvel at our saga." XII The end of a civilization is a tragic thing. On the desert planet of Gorel-zed, the last world to survive the slow nova of its sun, the Gizls, once the pests but now through brain surgery the possessors in their hardy bodies of the accumulated knowledge of the frail human beings, were preparing to flee. Their self-supporting ships were ready, capable of crossing space to the ends of the universe. But their universe was barren. No planet could receive them. All were doomed as was theirs, Gorel-zed. They set out for a new galaxy, knowing they would not reach it but that their descendants might. They became nomads of space, self-sufficient. For generations they wandered, their population diminishing. Their scientist-philosophers evolved the theory that accounted for their spaceborn ennui with life, their acceptance of their fate, their eventual doom. They had no roots, no place of their own. They had only the mechanistic world of their ships--which were vehicles, not a land. They must find a home of their own, or die. Several times in their odyssey they had come to a planet which could have housed them. But each time an injunction which had been built into them at the time of the brain surgery prevented them from staying. The doomed human beings on Gorel-zed had built into the very fiber of the Gizls--who were, after all, only animals--the injunction that no human being could be harmed for their comfort.