He was silent a moment, then suddenly dragged us down into the deeper shadow of the great machines beside us. There, with the lurid light of the coma on his strange features, he spoke swiftly. "Najus Nar is--living," he said, "but I will tell you what came upon us. You saw our ships fall in the battle over the city here, crashing down into it. At once these liquid comet-creatures were upon us, most of our crews having been killed in the crash, and but a few were left; but these being injured, too, they annihilated them with crimson bolts before we realized it, leaving but Najus Nar and myself, whom they wished, apparently, to question. Us they secured by metal bonds to one of the great machines, then came to us with little metal models, made of what seemed plastic gleaming metal, which could change instantaneously through a myriad different forms at their operation, and which they used for a rough communication with us. And through these and the things they explained to us, we learned, Najus Nar and I, something of the purpose and the past of these comet-creatures. "Eons they had dwelt upon the central worlds of this giant comet that roamed the outer void, shaping those worlds to their will as it flashed on. They had used the coma's electrical energy for their own weapons, and had used it to produce light-vibrations, a white light which they turned on and off for their day and night. The coma's energy, indeed, was the source of all their world's activities, but as their giant comet plunged on through space, that energy, ever shot backward in the tail that drove the comet on, was dissipated faster and faster, the coma waning and dying as all comets wane and die in time. But one thing could save them: to absorb into the coma vast quantities of matter, which would be converted instantly into electrical energy to replenish the coma. Not far from the great comet at that time loomed a vast universe of suns, and if the comet were to crash through the universe its suns and worlds would replenish their waning coma and save their comet from death. They needed but to change the comet's course, to send it toward the universe instead of passing it, and to do this they set up a great comet-control.