"They are communicating by thought!" announced Zezdon Afthen presently. "But I cannot understand them, for the impulses are too weak to be intelligently received." For nearly an hour the _Banderlog_ hung beside the fleet, then it turned about, and raced once more to the _Thought_. Inside the lock, and a moment later Arcot appeared again on the threshold of the door. He looked immensely relieved. "Well, I have some good news," he said and smiled, sitting down. "Follow that bunch, Morey, and I'll tell you about it. Set it and she'll hold nicely. We have a long way to go, and those are slow freighters, accompanied by one Cruiser. "Those men," he began, "are men of Venone. You remember Thett's records said something of the Mighty Warless Ones of Venone? Those are they. They inhabit most of this universe, leaving the Thessians but four planets of a minor sun, way off in one corner. It seems the Thessians are their undesirable exiles, those who have, from generation to generation, been either forced to go there, or who wanted to go there. "They did not like the easier and more effective method of disposing of undesirables, the instantaneous death chamber they now use. Thett was their prison world. No one ever returned and his family could go with him if they desired, but if they did not, they were carefully watched for outcroppings of undesirable traits--murder, crime of any sort, any habitual tendency to injustice. "About six hundred years ago of our time, Thett revolted. There were scientists there, and their scientists had discovered a thing that they had been seeking for generations--the Twin-ray. I don't know what it is, and the Venonians don't either. It is the ray that destroys relux and lux, however, and can be carried only on a machine the size of their forts, due to some limitations. Just what those limitations are the Venonians don't know. Other than that ray they had no new weapons. "But it was enough. Their guard ships which had circled the worlds of the prison system, Antseck, were suddenly destroyed, so suddenly that Venone received no word of it till a consignment ship, bringing prisoners, discovered their absence. The consignment ship returned without landing. Thett was now independent. But they were bound to their system, for although they had the molecular ships, they had never been permitted to have time apparatus, nor to see it, nor was any one who knew its principles ever consigned there. The result was that they were as isolated as ever.