How old, then, was Del Andres the magnificent? Man's allotted span, increased by the elimination of all disease, covers but a hundred and fifty years; yet Andres had seen and fought those years away within the vast systems of Centauri and Lalande, and he seemed still a young man, by appearance no older than Frederix's thirty years. Aye, there were mysteries about Del Andres--rumors about a Vron princess far across space, years ago as time runs. Intuitively Frederix moved to luxurious draperies hanging on the walls, moved them aside and a sigh came from his parted lips. The sheer, glorious, breath-taking beauty of the picture revealed stunned him! Third-dimensional it seemed, tinted with an ethereal loveliness, the supreme glory of womankind-- Haughtiness, perhaps, but the haughtiness that breeds the hope of conquest that would be rich, indeed, in its fulfillment. He released the drapes and turned aside with a cry in his heart. Only now did he fully realize the fatalistic spirit which drove Del Andres: the devil-may-care fearlessness, the sheer recklessness, the constant hoping, perhaps, for death. Small wonder that Hunter Frederix left that shrine and quested inward, saddened immeasurably by what he had seen and what he had so suddenly realized. For he had seen, in that moment, into the hidden recesses of a great man's soul. The dining salle opened before him, seemingly converted into a species of _chambre-des-horreurs_ since robot parts were strewn all over the place: limbs, wires, sockets, photocells, small atomic motors. Robot control was a hobby of Andres--a robot of his making had, at Kackijakaala, entered and opened the gates of the fortress at which the Legion had hammered futilely for months on end in conquering the Dwares of Centauri and bringing peace and prosperity to the system's many races--prosperity and _the ultimate hope of cosmic conquest_! He crossed the sill, started hurriedly towards a radio cabinet in the far corner. Simultaneously a door nearby fell silently open and what he saw caused, at first, a smile to flash across his bearded face. Into the room came a tiny form, probably three feet tall, hairy and chubby like a Ganymedean monkey, its face a delicate pink, its large eyes an innocent baby-blue, dominating a pudgy simian face. A robot, no less--the robot about which Del had talked--whose comical aspect was not at all in keeping with the grim menace of a paralysis-pellet gun in one manual extremity and a disrupter in the other! Its thick lips parted and a reproduction of Andres' voice said: "Don't move or I shall be forced to shoot. You will kindly remain as you are until Del Andres returns!" Whereupon the litany continued rapidly in Lalandean and Centaurian and abated.