Bill thought with a grimace of all those inter-planetary spacers that had vanished without trace. "Without Energon Screens, without the invulnerable Vulcanite or the Dispersal Beam, they never had the ghost of a chance...!" he exclaimed inwardly, and his long, vise-like hands slowly knotted at his sides. Beads of perspiration rolled down his cheeks as he concentrated on finding a solution to their problem. The staccato sound of the landing signal swept through the ship as they prepared to make contact. In the near distance the great city shone under the illumination of the rings, enveloped in the sepulchral silence of its cataleptic legions. Bill's eyes widened as the thought slowly evolved into ordered processes in his mind. "The _Aureans_...." Involuntarily he spoke aloud. "Hyperspace!" If he could awaken even one of those remaining ancients who knew the secret of hyperspace, he might contact Terra, or one of the inhabited planets. Hope rose like an exultant flame, and he hurried to the Juvenal chamber where Margalida recovered. At the doorway of the control room, he almost collided with Freml, the Panadur, and it suddenly occurred to Bill he had not seen the silvery Psycho-synthetist for some time. "Where have you been? Under the treatment?" Bill inquired. "Of course not!" Freml telepathed disdainfully. "What need have I of such crude methods? As soon as I awoke I left the chamber ... my people supplied some energy, I needed nothing else. But you're hurrying...." "To the Juvenal Chamber. We have no time to waste!" Bill flashed. "If we can awaken one of those cataleptic _Aurean_ scientists, we may get from him the necessary equations to use hyperspace, Freml.... It means we can contact our worlds ... obtain aid!" "Perhaps I can help," the Panadur thought slowly. "It should not be so difficult to bring them back to conscious life." He followed Bill into the hushed atmosphere of the Juvenal, his own mind strangely blanked as he communicated with the other Panadurs aboard. It was their way, mysterious, aloof. And now that the screens were down, the subtle, all-pervading vibrations of the Cinnabarians had commenced again. * * * * * They would have to don Energon helmets, Bill thought wearily. It was a battle without end. But the sight of Margalida was to him like the sight of an eden seen from the bleak monotony of desert wastes. His electric-blue eyes kindled as the girl smiled, a question in her eyes. She extended a fragile hand that might have been carven of Jadite, and in the husky voice with the harp-like cadences she said: "I know you've won ... and for the first time in my life, I have been glad to know that beings have died!" It was as near as she could come to exult in the extinction of the dreaded _Energasts_.