It streamed forward; and as it passed the head of the next man, there seemed additional light adding to it. Both men had their hands up, as though to guide the stream--gently to guide that which must have been very nearly impalpable. But it was growing in density. Soon, further up the line with every brain contributing a share, the slowly moving stream began to have substance. From vague, luminous pallidness, it turned darker; gaining a solidity--a weight. The guiding hands sustained it, moulded it, pushed it onward. It came to the end of the line. Other workers appeared; carried it away--a long flexible rod of newly created thought-matter. The basic inorganic substance of this world. The thickness of a man's body, it seemed coming of interminable length. Then the first worker gave out--dropped back exhausted. Then others. The rod grew tenuous and pale in places. It broke. Workers carried away the broken segments. It was not a solid yet; they moulded it by their touch as they carried it away. Another signal from the leader. The two hundred workmen, their duty done for the time, rose and departed. They moved unsteadily, exhausted. And another shift came to take their places. How long a spell of mental work this might have been, I cannot say. Bee asked me, in an awed whisper, how long we had been watching. A futile question! As Will once said, "Like trying to add an apple to an orange." To me--idly watching, and with memory of an Earth-standard of what we are pleased to call Time--I would have said, five minutes. To one of those laboring workers--an eternity of effort. Yet in our fatuous little world of Earth we tick off seconds, minutes, hours, and think we are establishing a standard for the Universe! Brutar said, "That is the crude thought-material. From there it goes to our workshops, where other minds bring it to higher, individual substances from which we make--well, we make these things we are making here." His look of cunning came again. He would give away no secrets to me--his enemy. He seemed very proud of his cunning, this Brutar. A man of low intelligence, I realized. Yet he must be powerful, to be the leader of all this. Later I learned that he had a powerful mind--not for creating this useful substance of industry; nor was his an intellect of keen reasoning ability. Rather was it a mind powerful for the weaving of that tenuous thought-substance of combat. He was a warrior. And in mental speech as well, he was fluent, plausible, guileful. Bee was saying, "Is all work mental?" He did not understand the question. Eo said, "She means, is all work done by the mind?" "Oh yes," Brutar smiled. "Why not? Except--well you've seen what part the hands play--the bodies. It is comparatively unimportant." "May we see what they are doing with that thought-substance?" I suggested. "No," he smiled. "I told you before, not now."