Tyr listened to the mumble that came from the man's mouth, watched him crawl away. He turned to Katha, "That is the governor Mason gave the Trylla." Katha let her hip rest against the onyx tabletop as her white fingers sought for an hydroette. The end came greenly alive at her first intake of breath. Blowing green smoke from between her red lips she leaned back and laughed softly. "You know, you _are_ a god in some ways. Your very bigness, the titanic strength and speed of you. If you swore allegiance to the _ardth_, you would rise fast. You would be a space commander in a few years." "Is that a promotion over being a god?" "Tyr, listen to me. Be sensible. Use that brain of yours. You have a brain, and a good one. It is untutored, but it sops up knowledge as a Venusian sponge does water! I saw your eyes moving in that laboratory of mine. You deduced the uses of the fluoroscope, the electronic microscope. You needed only to see them in action--" She caught her breath. The skin around her lips showed white, as her mouth tightened. "Perhaps you could even duplicate them, given time and the materials, just from seeing them. Could you, Tyr?" Tyr wondered, himself. His mind held a confused jumble of plates and wires, and remembrances of diagrams he had seen in books in the Tower. Left alone, he rather imagined he could do what Katha hinted. Especially if he worked in sunlight. For the sun would open the facets of his mind, make his brain as keen and alive as his body, give it that subconscious awareness of knowledge that awed him. "It may be racial memories," he said slowly. "In most men those are buried too deeply for practical use. But with me it may be different. I do know that things do not long remain a mystery with me, once I ponder on them." Katha walked across the room, staring at the cushions that she kicked idly aside. Her thin brows were puckered. "I said you could be a Space Commander, Tyr. You could be more than that. You could be Presider itself, if--if what I think about you is true. "The Trylla think the _ardth_ a heartless crew. Oh, I know. But what the Trylla, and the other inhabitants of the planets we have taken over do not know is this: We _ardth_ are facing a fight against extinction. It won't come for centuries, but it is coming, as surely as you live. "_The Glows are dying!_ "And when that happens, all our cities and all our spaceships--you might say our lives as well--will come to a stop. If you--" * * * * * Men came through the doorway, and Space Commander Mason was in front of them. Otho poked his fat and sneering face between two _ardth_ and laughed at Tyr. The men splayed out and Mason walked toward them, a grim smile on his lips. "You've left quite a trail behind you tonight, Tyr," he said. "Those guards, then Otho. I tried to treat with you as an equal. Your word means much with the Trylla. But I made a mistake."