Even now Earth might be suffering the invasion! They had been gone nearly three years. And during that time, the monsters might have swooped down hideously out of space. They might return to find the Earth a wasteland! His thoughts were a turmoil that grew worse as he stared at the poster. The unknown artist had done his job well. A feeling of horror poured out of it, filling him with an insensate desire to find such monstrosities and rend and maim them, as they had tormented the unfortunate green people. Graves came stomping up to the control room, carrying lunch, and took one look at the picture. "Serves the heathens right," he grumbled. "Look at them. In hell, suffering from the lashes of the devils of the pit. And still holding up that heathen charm." Lenk blinked. But Graves' idea wasn't too fantastic, at that. The creatures did look like devils, and the T-shaped object might be a religious symbol. Hadn't some faith or other used the tau cross in its worship? And those objects on the third world back had resembled swastikas, which were another religious symbol on Earth. That part fitted. During periods of extreme stress or danger, man sought some home in his faith. Was it so unnatural that alien races might do the same? "Isn't there anything hopeful in your religion, Graves?" he asked bitterly, wondering what the man had been like before his conversion to the rigidity he now possessed. He'd probably been as violent an atheist. Usually, a fanatic who switched sides became doubly fanatical. The revival of religious devotion had begun some fifteen years before, and from what Lenk had seen, the world had been a better and more kindly place for it. But there would always be those who thought the only true devotion lay in the burning of witches. Or maybe Graves needed psychiatric treatment for his morose moods were becoming suspiciously psychotic, and his fanaticism might be only a sign of deeper trouble. The man went off muttering something about the prophecy and the time being at hand for all to be tried in fire. Lenk went back to staring at the poster until he heard the scout come back. He found Aimes and Jeremy busy unloading what seemed to be loot enough to fill two of the scouts. "A whole library, almost intact," Aimes spoke with elation. "And plenty of it is on film, where we can correlate words and images! In two weeks, I'll speak the language like a native." "Good!" Lenk told him. "Because in about that time, we'll be home on Earth. As long as there's any chance that our people should be warned about invaders, I'm not delaying any longer!" "You can forget the alien invaders," Jeremy objected. Then he exploded his thunderbolt. The horrible aliens had proved to be no more than a group of purple-skinned people on the other side of the planet with a quite divergent culture, but of the same basic stock as the green-skinned men. They also exaggerated in their drawings, and to about the same degree.