This meant that the world of Ladnora, whose gentle saffron inhabitants were incapable of offering resistance, could not be conquered. The Ladnorans, in their generosity, had offered the refugees from Gorel-zed a hemisphere of their own. But the Gizls required a world of their own, not a half-world. They accepted a small continent only and made it spaceborne and took it with them. The Crevisians were the next to be visited. They ruled a belt of fertile land around the equator of their world--the rest was icy waste. The Gizls took a slice of each polar region and, joining them, made them spaceborne. In time they reached the system of Sol. Mars attracted them first because of its sands. Mars was like Gorel-zed in many ways. But that very resemblance meant it was not for them. Mars was a dead world, as their own Gorel-zed had become. But the next planet they came to was a green planet. The Gizls moored the acquisitions in the asteroid belt and visited Earth. Here, at their planetfall, Australia, was the perfect land. Even its inhabitants--the great kangaroos, the smaller wallabies--breathed Home to the Gizls. But there were also the human beings who had made the land their own. And though memory of their origin had weakened in the Gizls, the injunction had not. For a time they set up a kind of camp in the great central desert and with delight found their legs again. Out of the cramped ships they came, to bound in freedom and fresh breathable air across the wasteland. But hardy, naked, black human beings lived in the desert and they attacked the Gizls with their primitive weapons. And when the Gizls fled, not wishing to harm them, they came to white men, who attacked them with explosive weapons. And so they took to their ships and were spaceborne again. But the attraction of Earth was strong and they sought another continent, called North America. And in the center of it they found a great race whose technology was nearly as great as their own. These people had an intelligence and drive which rivaled that of their human antecedents, whose minds had been transferred to the Gizl's hardy, cumbersome bodies. * * * * * Rezar paused. His intelligent eyes seemed misplaced in his heavy animal body. "What attracted you to Superior, of all places?" Alis asked. Rezar seemed to smile. "Two things. Cavalier and bubble gum." "What?" Alis said. "You're kidding!" "No," Rezar said. "It's true. Bubble gum because after generations of subsistence on capsule food our teeth had weakened and loosened, and bubble gum strengthened them. Nourishment, no. Exercise, yes. And Cavalier Institute because here were men who spoke in terms which paralleled the secret of our spacedrive." Alis laughed. "This would make Father expire of joy," she said. "But now you know he's just a phony."