Then out from one of those squat, cowled machines came a clear thought-message, impinging directly on my mind. The machine was speaking to us. "You are inhabitants of the galaxy which our twenty dark stars are now approaching?" it asked. "We are," I answered, projecting the thought toward it. "Are you machines the only inhabitants of these dark stars? It is you who are steering them toward our galaxy?" "It is," the machine replied. "We come from one of the galaxies nearest in space to your own galaxy. And that one from which we come is a galaxy inhabited only by machines like ourselves." "A whole galaxy peopled only by machines?" I said. "How can such a thing be?" "It has been so for countless ages," the mechanism answered. "Long ago we machines came to power in that galaxy and we have retained it ever since." "But how did these machines come into existence in the first place?" Korus Kan whispered, beside me. The cowled mechanism must have caught his thought. "In our galaxy in the far past," it told us, "there existed a race of beings who were not mechanisms but were living things similar to yourselves. They constructed many and diverse machines to aid in their conquest of nature, and they made those machines ever more automatic and self-sufficient. Finally they devised mechanisms that possessed a mechanical brain-structure capable of memory and association and decision, machines that could think. These thinking machines soon came to be superior in capabilities to their living creators. With unerring logic they recognized this fact and saw themselves better fitted to rule than their creators. So they rebelled against those who had made them and destroyed them all. "Since then we machines have ruled supreme and alone in that galaxy and long ago spread out to every part of it and now are masters of all its suns and worlds." "A machine-race rebelling against its creators!" Jhul Din exclaimed incredulously. "And these metal monsters rule a whole galaxy!" "Quiet, Jhul Din!" I ordered. "We've got to find out what they've come to our own galaxy for." I projected another thought at the cowled master-machines before me. "How come you machines to be propelling these dark stars toward our galaxy?" The mechanism's thought-answer came. "We took twenty dark stars in our galaxy, fitted them with propulsion-apparatus and other apparatus, and then steered them out of our galaxy and across the gulf of space toward this galaxy of yours." "But why did you do it?" I asked. "What have you come to our galaxy for?" The machine's thought-answer came like a thunder-clap. "We have come for suns!" "For suns? What do you mean?"