Guy tried to push the physicists that were working on his pet projects and found a placitude that maddened him. The necessities of sudden and decisive action were not there. Ertinians didn't think as Terrans do. Eons had passed since anything of real velocity was needed, and their thinking habits had been trained along these lines. The idea of accepting an idea and developing it immediately into a practical thing was unheard of. There had been no need. Certainly there must be no need now. Guy was a dynamo of action in a world geared to ten miles per hour. He found that their scientific developments were slow and cumbersome. Their science was not their own, but that of the worlds of their passage, and with years between such contacts, scientific ambition was low, indeed. With no competitive force driving them forward, Ertene had assumed the role of a lazy man, content to live in indolence. Had any danger come to Terra, it would have been answered immediately and more than likely Terra would have gone out to meet the threat on the threat's home ground. But after the first flurry of worry over the disclosure of Ertene to Terra by the man Gomanar, Ertene's concern subsided. Half-heartedly Ertene put up vortex projectors about their cities, and then returned to their homes. At first, Guy worried about these weapons. It was not fair to his peace of mind to see on every hand the evidence of Ertene's dislike of Terra. His own feelings were mixed; Terra hadn't played fair with him, true, but the idea of ruling a planet that would kill thousand upon thousand of his people stuck in Guy's throat. He worried about this, and because he could tell no one about it--not even Thomakein for fear that his motives be mis-read--he worried alone. His worry gave him something to do, at least. * * * * * But then as the days added into kilodays, and Ertene continued on and on and on in its course through the heavens, and no Terran forces came to contest or to seek, Guy became used to the idea that Ertene's barrier was far more obscure than the proverbial needle in the haystack. A magnet, well plied, will show the fallacy of that platitude, but trying to see nothing against a field of black--impossible. Guy knew that his no-radiation detectors were being used. He suspected deeper developments, and fumed and fretted because he could not know what they were. His imagination cooked up many ideas, possible and impossible, for the finding of such a minute bubble in space. And it all reduced to one thing. Mephisto had been unfound for hundreds of years of space travel and exploration. Men suspected the possibility of inner- and outer-planets and went on the search for them. They failed until the Ertinian science provided Guy with an instrument to locate such bodies. Ertene's chances were excellent.