There was an alien presence in this nothingness, a vampire presence that clutched a pathetic, limp figure light-years away, and reached out toward Erik with its hungry essence. Erik stood straight in the midst of nothing, his head thrown back, his yellow hair lifting on the wind that blows between the galaxies. The questing essence touched him and explored him, blindly unaware of humanity's challenge to its elemental insistence. Erik let his mind expand beyond him in a flexing of sure strength. Erik forced his mind from him in a blaze of anger. Erik attacked with his mind, magnificent in its unchained and immeasurable power. The alien force receded, it dwindled, it diminished. It melted before the strength of Erik's mind, that was a burning, pulsating power like light, and yet was not light. The vampire essence slowly, reluctantly, relinquished its distant, doll-like victim and retired in pain beyond the edges of the galaxies. In a room that was a room once more, in a room that was yet dark but lighted to him by the cold fire of his brain, Erik strode to a corner and lifted the crumpled, unconscious figure of Spira in his arms. Carrying her tenderly, he left the terrible room. * * * * * The corridor was empty. Birkala was no longer there. Erik pulled down the control switch, and the blackness that had sprung up behind him in the transmission room faded into the harmless air of Orcti. Bearing Spira, Erik strode through the house and out into the garden. Birkala was pacing back and forth near the easel, his face working in his agitation. Erik approached him, and laid Spira gently on the soft grass before him. She lay still, the rise and fall of her breasts the only indication that she lived. "Is she all right?" choked Birkala, kneeling at her side in an agony of remorse. "She is not harmed physically," said Erik, and Birkala gasped with relief. Erik added: "But you must see the rest of your answer." He leaned over her and called softly: "Spira!" As though awakening from a spell, Spira opened her golden eyes. They fixed themselves on Erik's sorrowful face, and they widened. She smiled. But, with growing horror, Birkala realized it was not the smile of Spira, the sister of his childhood. It carried no message of recognition nor of intelligence. It was the pitiful smile of mindlessness. She gurgled. Erik helped her to sit up, and she stared about her wonderingly. "You have looked on me as an alien, Birkala," he said sternly, "but we are of the same humanity. The mother of your race, too, was Earth. But while the far-flung children of Earth had to start as pioneers to build the cultures of their varied worlds, the men of Earth forged ahead through the millennia in their climb toward whatever estate may one day be the goal of mankind.