With gloved hand, she appeared to be tracing out some maze of deep cut markings that figured what must have been an altar-fane. "Do you expect any results from this ritual mumbo-jumbo?" he questioned irritably. Songeen looked up, startled. "Not more ritual than any other mathematics," she chided. "This is no temple, as you seem to imagine. It is the old quarantine station. I seek a doorway, but not into a hidden passage. There are other doorways. This one leads between dimensions. My world exists in a different plane. At least, our pathway to it follows strange ways, that you could never understand. You are no scientist or scholar. How could you grasp such unknown and forgotten matters? How could anyone in your world?" Newlin stared at her, seeing things he had only guessed before. "You are--_alien_," he said. "You can't guess how alien," she answered. "I said I was not of Venusian stock. My people came from outside. Our world exists in the same plane as yours, a planet circling one of the nearer stars. This place was never our home, but we had colonies on Venus, Earth, Mars and one of Jupiter's moons. Other colonies--like this one--and observatories and quarantine stations. Our scientific observers and the medical staff stayed here. They studied and recorded and treated. "We were not gods nor demons nor anything else supernatural. Just a people not human, but not too remote from humanity. Just emissaries and workers, students and doctors. You might call us elder brothers to the human race. We came not to conquer, enslave and exploit, but to help. Sometimes the Masters came with us, since they were interested in our work. "Many times, by our guidance, human beings reached high levels of development in the arts and sciences. We taught them and guided their stumbling steps, and released to them such knowledge as we dared trust to them. Time and again, we raised them from the slime, only to have them fall back. There is fatal disease in the race, a disease of instability and cruelty and violence. Call it madness--insanity--in the technical sense. It is pathological, and the disease is common to the human race, in all its ramifications. The Solar System is mad, and all who dwell in it are lunatics. Dangerous and homicidal lunatics. Sol's system is the asylum and pesthouse of our galaxy. We--my people--are its keepers and doctors. "We are charged with the care and treatment of an ailing form of life. Because of our near likeness, in form and thought, it was hoped that we could understand and help them; in time, perhaps, find a cure. There are other races inhabiting the galaxy--many of them, civilized, intelligent, living, and sometimes even of matter similar to ours. Their minds and bodies are too different. We are nearest, both in form and feeling.