Garth scrambled to his feet "Yes, my Lord Visitor," he said. "I have several questions." The Visitor chuckled reedily. "You may find the answers just a little bit hard to understand." Garth smiled, some of his fear vanishing. The Visitor sounded a little like his senile grandfather, back home. "That is why you are asked so few questions these days, my Lord," he said. "Our scientists have about as much trouble figuring out what your answers mean as they do in solving the problems without consulting you at all." "Of course." The head of The Visitor bobbed affirmatively several times as he propelled his wheelchair a few inches forward. "If I gave you the answers to all your problems for you, so you could figure them out too easily, you'd never be developing your own thinking powers. But I've never failed to answer any questions you asked. Now have I? And accurately, too." The thin voice rang with pride. "You've never stumped me yet, and you never will." [Illustration] "No, my Lord," answered Garth. "So perhaps you'll answer my questions, too, even though they're a little different from the kind you're accustomed to. I'm a newspaper reporter, and I want to verify some of our traditions about you." * * * * * As The Visitor remained silent, Garth paused and looked around him at the small, bare, naked-walled room. "This _is_ a spaceship, isn't it?" The huddled figure in the wheelchair cackled in a brief laugh. "I've been hoping that somebody would get up enough nerve someday to ask that kind of question," it said. "Yep, this is a spaceship. And a darned big one." "How did you happen to land on this planet?" "Had an accident. Didn't want to land here, but there wasn't any choice. Made a mighty good landing, considering everything. It was a little rough, though, in spots." "How many people were there in the ship, in addition to yourself?" The Visitor's voice turned suddenly soft. "There were three thousand, nine hundred and forty-eight passengers and twenty-seven in the crew when the accident happened." "My Lord," asked Garth, "did any survive, aside from you?" The Visitor was silent for many minutes, and his answer, when he spoke, was a faint whisper, filled with the anguish of seven thousand years. "Not one survived. Not one. They were all dead, most of them, long before the ship touched ground, in spite of everything I could do. I was as gentle as I could be, but we touched a hundred _g_ a couple of times on on the way down. Flesh and blood just weren't made to take shocks like that. I did all I could." "You were the pilot, then? You landed the ship?" asked Garth. "I landed the ship," said The Visitor. "If I may ask, my Lord, how did you manage to survive when all the others died?"