"Men!" he gasped. "What are men doing in that sky-jewel? They could not have made it and come out of the sky--unless they are gods!" The "man-gods" wore strange garments. They were amazingly frail and beautiful looking people, like women in their fairness of skin and their almost complete lack of hair on their bodies. Kuru felt that he could have broken one of them with each hand. But what strange strength of magic did they possess to make this shining cave that brought them from the sky? He heard a ferocious roar which emanated from the region of the sky-cave. It was a murder-beast. He saw several of the "man-gods" run to a gleaming sort of fence at the edge of the wing that had extended itself out of the black hole. They were looking downward. Now here was something Kuru could understand. In the face of the terrifying murder-beast he would be able to tell whether or not these people were weaklings. He saw one of them extract a small object from his garments. When this small object was pointed downward in the direction of the roaring murder-beast, a thin, bright line of light appeared below it, and the murder-beast's roar was cut off. Kuru's teeth chattered slightly. Undoubtedly, he was looking upon the representatives of a race of gods. They could command the powers of lightning. Still, he could not run away even now, because only a female would come screaming home to tell of what she had merely seen from afar. A hunter like Kuru, who was already a respected member of the family council, would investigate and have something more to tell other than how frightened he was. On the contrary, he must show how brave he could be. He must get closer to the sky-cave of the gods and watch them for a while.... * * * * * "Infra-red picked it up. It's something pretty big, over in that tall tree. Been there since before sundown." "Hmmm.... Patience, cunning, warm-blooded, large size. Do you think--" "Now don't let's get back on _that_ again!" "But Henderson said he saw one with his binoculars, up on that ridge, early this afternoon." "Good God, Frank! Can't you realize you're being victimized by an old complex? Why is it we _have_ to find human beings on other worlds? We've been searching the stars unsuccessfully for more than a millenium." "This is our farthest reach out into the galaxy--" "Yeah. By God, it's almost six hundred light years, twenty years by chronology, and two for us even under trans-C time contraction. _That_, my friend, is some traveling!" "It's a beautiful planet--just like Earth was supposed to be once. You know, sometimes I think civilization is a disease." "That's a _great_ idea! So we're microbes infesting the universe!" * * * * *