A hush fell upon the room. The leader of this strange people--the one they called The Manager, was rising from his seat back of a desk. His head was very large, his eyes large, liquid and expressive. A total lack of eyebrows, of hair on his head, gave a mixture of the comical and the obscene to his appearance. But the respect with which his counselors, ranged on either side of him, regarded him, ignored his appearance. They were all, without exception, victims of the strange and terrible mutations of type induced by the First Race's callous disregard to the dangers of the rays. All wore loose garments of drab material which concealed their deformities to some extent. The Manager's large, intense eyes fastened on the Earthmen, and he addressed them: "Men of Earth: We have captured you in battle, but we would be friends with the Old World. Why did you try to fight us?" "You were murdering helpless victims," Sine said shortly. "It was not our fight, but we could not stand by and permit such a thing." Something like amusement flashed up in The Manager's enormous eyes, so old, weary and wise. "So you could not bear to think of an easy death for those of the First Race? What think you of their treatment of us?" He raised a scrawny arm--so thin it suggested a skeleton. "Hunted like beasts--imprisoned and tortured! Are we not human?" "You see," Kass interposed diplomatically--"we were their guests. And in a way their quarrel...." The Manager cut him short peremptorily: "You were their guests! You lolled with them in The Pleasure Bubble, in the beautiful sun! The sun that most of us have never seen! And down in the dark half-human beings like yourselves--toiled and slaved at those devilish integrators to keep the machinery of pleasure going. "You were the guests in the Governor's palace--in the magnificent city of Rubio, though to you it may seem dismal. But did you think of the poor slaves, deep underground, in the slimy sewers, in the uranium pits, in the power plants? You basked in luxury with the First Race, and their fight was your fight--their enemies...." He was working himself into a fury, evidently forgetting the original purpose of this conference with the prisoners. But one of the counselors now approached him, bowed respectfully so that his scaly face was hidden. The Manager cut short his tirade. "What is it, Gnom?" "Isn't The Manager digressing?" Gnom asked in a hollow voice. "These men of Earth are now our guests. They come at an opportune time--when we shall reap the fruits of our long planning. If we wrest power from the First Race, shall we not need the friendship of the Mother Planet? Let them, then, carry our story to Earth, if it be that we may need their help." The Manager stood in thought. At last, coming to a decision, he asked sharply: "With whom do you stand, men of Earth? With us or our oppressors?" Kass and Lents looked at one another blankly. They started as Sine spoke up sonorously, beside them: