"You pitiful pigmies," repeated Knof Llud. "You're pigmies not only in physical size, but in everything else. You've thrown away everything that made being human worthwhile, all for the sake of your one pigmy ambition--to multiply your crawling little lives and become more and more at the same time that you become less and less. You've shrunk into vermin. In the end you'll probably shrink away to nothing, and good riddance." With sudden change of pace he shot out a question: "What's the longest wave length of visible light?" "2100 angstroms," the answer was mechanical. Then, "You--" The captain smiled a smile of weary disdain. "I thought so. Six hundred trillion of you, eh? Crawling around down there in the dark, because you see in the far ultraviolet--and the atmosphere stops those frequencies. You can't see the stars! For thousands of years men watched the stars and wanted them and were kept trying by sight of them--but you can't see the stars any more." The face stared at him with great eyes full of unspeakable hate, and spat a word which had not been in the language when the _Quest III_ was launched. The screen went suddenly blank. * * * * * Knof Llud turned away, and his eyes fell on another vision screen. Earth was clear in it, dead ahead, a disk so near that land and sea were distinguishable with the naked eye, and coming rapidly nearer. The sight cost him a moment's nostalgic pain; then he thought of the little men, swarming ant-like over every square foot of habitable land.... Vermin he had called them; vermin they were. He found himself, for no sensible reason, counting seconds. He had got to seventeen when the screen that showed Earth dissolved into a featureless and blinding glare. At the same instant a force too tremendous for the senses to register smote the _Quest III_. The interior of the ship, everything and everyone in it seemed to stretch and distort like rubber as the gravitic field was strained beyond its elastic limit. The lights went out as the drive units claimed the last erg of available energy and shrieked their overloaded protest through the crushing and twisted darkness. But then the lights went on again and the ship was hurtling free in space. Its people picked themselves up dazedly and tried to understand why they were still alive. "Gee, Dad," young Knof said admiringly as he dabbed at a blackening eye, "what did you do?" "_I_ didn't do much," said the captain. "The fireworks were from our little friends. I just took your advice about getting the other fellow mad, and it worked. They just shut their eyes and swung with everything they had." The boy gazed at the vision screen where the Sun was already a star again. He whistled. "They had plenty."