“For millions of years my people had inhabited and dominated Ma Gong—developing a high civilization, and scientists who had explored the infinitely small and the infinitely great. Our interplanetary vehicles had traveled to and explored the other worlds that served the Great Lord Sun, as well as their numerous satellites, and on some of these we found human beings, but on none but Lu Gong did we find beings with a culture that even approached our own. “Soon a regular freight and passenger line was in service between Ma Gong and Lu Gong, and we traded and visited with that accursed race of slim, white beings in all friendliness. Then they sent a colony of their pale people to live on Ma Gong, and we sent a colony of our own people to settle on Lu Gong. From the start these white colonists made trouble. Presently blood was shed, reprisals followed, and things went so far that war was eventually declared between the two worlds—a war which wiped out the people of Lu Gong, and most of the people of Ma Gong—destroying also, the culture of a million years on our world. “The terrific weapons which the people of Lu Gong used were huge clusters of meteoroids which they hurled at us, after condensing them in interplanetary space by bringing into play certain magnetic lines of force which they were able to control. The face of our world still bears the hideous dents where these clusters fell. Many wiped out millions of helpless people, destroying the work of centuries. The interplanetary fleets, battling with their rays—ours green, those of Lu Gong red—practically destroyed each other. “Our people were unable to condense and hurl meteoric matter as the people of Lu Gong did, but they were not lacking in scientific knowledge, and the great P’an-ku who ruled them at the time set up great ray projectors clear around our world, several of which were constantly trained on the enemy planet. The purpose of these rays was to destroy the atmosphere of Lu Gong, dissipating it into interplanetary space, and eventually stifling all the inhabitants of that world. “The worst drawback to this method of warfare was that it slowly vitiated our own atmosphere where the beams passed through it, and thus constituted a system of slow suicide. “No quarter was asked, and there was none given on either side. Meanwhile our scientists, who had succeeded experimentally in slightly perturbing the motion of our world around the sun, asked permission of P’an-ku to construct a huge electro-magnetic power plant with which they might control the motion of Ma Gong at will, and thus dodge the huge missiles of Lu Gong which were daily wiping out our cities and decimating our population. He granted them permission, and they soon increased the number of their power units to such a degree that they were ready to try to control the orbit of Ma Gong.