"What is it?" Nathan whispered hoarsely. "Are the Jewels alive?" "Long ago," said Firebird, "the Envoys of Plar came into our System. They came from a universe so far away that our greatest telescopes have never given a clue to its presence. The inhabitants of that world are life forms with a basis of metallic salts and they are formed as you see this one. They are literally Jewels. The life forces are contained in mighty storage cells of raw electronic energy reduced to its simplest form. Some of the creatures are only single Jewels. The Envoys are of the highest type, having seven. "The life in them was dormant until they were brought together again. The Seventh Jewel was the brain so to speak. Each of the others might be likened to an arm or other organ of a human body, though that is far from accurate. The warming of the Jewels as they were brought nearer was the reaching out of their mutual life forces to seize upon each other. But no controlling life was there until the Seventh was near. It was buried deep in the ground, but the attraction between it and the other six was enough to draw it out to reunite with them." * * * * * Nathan watched the weird form as it gyrated in the air before them and lighted the way through the caverns. "What does it mean?" "Centuries ago--in our time--the Jewel Beings of Plar left on an expedition to explore the universe and study the inhabitants of the planets they came to. They found their science and skill to be so vastly superior to any other that they contacted, that they decided to help the backward peoples they found and share their science with those who could benefit by it. They hoped to speed the evolutionary advances of these races and some day establish a congress of the worlds. To those who had no space flight they revealed the secret of the art. And so on with other arts and sciences." "Do they intend to make such gifts to the Solar System?" "Their decision to help a race is determined by the report of one of the Envoys who is placed on a world for secret investigation. Chamar, the seven-jeweled one, was the Envoy placed to report on Earth and the Solar System." "Chamar! But how did he get scattered? Wasn't that like death to him?" "They are nearly immortal. Chamar was left here by the expedition and the rest of them went on. My grandfather was the first to whom Chamar revealed himself. But soon after that the Envoy was blasted in a laboratory explosion. My grandfather died of the injuries received there, but first he told my father about the Envoy.