Torlos turned and jumped out of the airlock. The ship rose high above him as he suddenly became visible on the plain below. He was running toward the city in great leaps of twenty feet--graceful, easy leaps that showed his tremendous power. Suddenly, a ship was darting down from the city toward him. As it curved down, Torlos stopped and made certain signals with his arms, then he stood quietly with his hands in the air. The ship hovered above him, and two men dropped thirty feet to the ground and questioned him for several minutes. Finally, they motioned to the ship, which dropped to ten feet, and the three men leaped lightly to its door and entered. The door snapped shut, and the ship shot toward the city. The magnetic wall opened for a moment, and the ship shot through. Within seconds, if was out of sight, lost in the busy air traffic above the city. "Well," said Arcot, "now we go back to the hills and wait." XX For two days, the _Ancient Mariner_ lay hidden in the hills. It was visible all that time, but at least two of the men were watching the sky every hour of the day. Torlos himself was, they knew, perfectly trustworthy, but they did not know whether his people were as honorable as he claimed them to be. Arcot and Wade were in the control room on the afternoon of the second day--not Earth days, but the forty-hour Nansalian days--and they had been quietly discussing the biological differences between themselves and the inhabitants of this planet. Suddenly, Wade saw a slowly moving speck in the sky. "Look, Arcot! There's Torlos!" They waited, ready for any hostile action as the tiny ship approached rapidly, circling slowly downward as it came nearer. It landed a few hundred feet away, and Torlos emerged, running rapidly toward the Earth ship. Arcot let him in through the airlock. Torlos smiled broadly. "I had difficulty in convincing the Council that my story was true. When I told them that you could go faster than light, they strongly objected. But they had to admit that you had certainly been able to tear down the mountain very effectively, and they had received reports of the destruction of the Satorian capitol. "It seems you first visited the city of Thanso when you came here. The people were nearly panic-stricken when they saw you rip that mountain down and uproot the magnetic ray station. No one ship had ever done that before! "But the fact that several guards had seen me materialize out of thin air, plus the fact that they knew you could make yourselves invisible, convinced them that my story was true. "They want to talk to you, and they say that they will gladly grant your requests. But you must promise them one thing--you must stay away from any of our people, for they are afraid of disease. Bacteria that do not bother you very much might be deadly to us. The Supreme Council of Three is willing to take the risk, but they will not allow anyone else to be exposed."