As he went down the aisle, Jonathan cast sidewise glances at the utterly alien beings that stood and looked at him. Here and there, though, he saw others like himself and the Zarathzans. Humans. Men with two arms and two legs. Women with lissome figures and soft red mouths. He felt a little warmer, and held his head higher, after seeing them. He came up the steps and stood beside Shar Bytu. The reptile nodded, smiling somewhat. "We had set great hopes on you. Earthling. Before your eyes you see creatures of bafflement and wonder tinged with a near-despair. The shadowy flames are a mystery and a menace to us. We had hoped--we had hoped strongly, that you might bring the solution to their strange deadliness. I know now they are as queer to you as to us." "There's more than those flames that's queer to me," replied Jonathan grimly. "First on the list is how I ever managed to get here at all. Where I got all those tricky powers from--" "That," deprecated Shar Bytu by a gesture of his six-clawed hand. "That is but a simple explanation. You will understand it when I point it out. You are merely the ultimate goal of evolution." "Oh," nodded Jonathan, and wondered if he looked blank. "What is the ultimate goal of evolution but perfection?" resumed the reptile. "On Earth Nature has experimented with the dinosaur, the bird, the fish. One by one she discarded them because they were not fit to survive their environment. But all the while Nature was learning. It was making strides. It tested and discarded. The reptile and the early forms of bird and fish and insect life were tossed into the discard. Nature knew there was something lacking. "She made man. She gave man the inherent ability to fit himself to any environment. She gave man a brain, a brain that gave off energy in the form of thought. Measured energy. Electrical energy. Energy that can be measured and graphed. But Nature, prodigal in her gifts, was also prodigal with man's mind. She gave man nine million brain cells--far more than he ever used. Only a great genius used one percent of those cells! "Then why was Nature so lavish? In man she had reached her absolute ultimate. There only remained for man to perfect the tremendous, unguessed power of his brain. By thought! By sending out beams of sheer solid thought, by dipping into those millions of brain cells for the ultimate power, the power that would make man--perfect!" Jonathan closed his eyes, shuddering. He opened his eyes and looked at Shar Bytu. "How do you know all this?" he whispered. * * * * * He thought in the frightened core of him of changes in the space-time continuum, that unguessable eons may have rolled past since last he left the Earth. That Earth was old beyond thought--