"It's Henry Callis!" he cried out. "He's proscribed for learning witchery! Grab him!" Henry stopped before him. Ole's words became a gurgle and dried up. "If I'm a witch," Henry said loudly, "I'm a good person to keep away from. Whether I am or not, I have something important to tell you. And all of you had better listen!" He started again for the platform, those along the aisle shrinking back as he passed. The Elders, from fat to withered, with the same uneasy expressions on their faces, watched silently as he climbed to the stage and faced them. He could feel their chill hostility. He knew now that he had done wrong but it was too late to undo it. He stopped a short distance from their table, half turned so the audience could hear him. * * * * * "I have been living in the houses of the Old Ones at the head of the valley, beyond the defrosters and the forest above them. And I also have been up to the top of the East Range, expecting to look over the edge of the world. But what I saw was another valley just like this one. It had a force fence, defrosters, hoppers, houses. Everything this valley has, except for one thing: living inhabitants. There were people in the houses. Dead people. Reduced to bones, the bones of people who had died from hunger and cold when everything in their valley suddenly ceased to work. "That is what sent me to the House of the Old Ones, to see if I could find out what had happened. I found out there that the Old Ones were not giants who did things with magic, but people like ourselves who used machinery to make things. Just as we make clothing with machinery here in Town. They had machines that could fly through the air. They could go the length of the valley in an hour in a road machine. With machines they built these buildings, dug the trenches for the hoppers, did everything. They were just men. Men who had studied in the learning houses from the time they were tiny children. And I found out more...." He stopped to take a quick look about the still hall. He felt the hostility. "And I found out more," he repeated. "I found that, in this valley, twenty banks of defrosters have already failed. Eleven houses cannot be used, plus two taverns and one factory here in town. It shows that our own system is breaking down. Some day--perhaps tomorrow, perhaps not until the time of our grandchildren--everything will stop as it did in the next valley. If we want to keep living, we must start to learn how to keep these machines running. At the House of the Old Ones there is a vast store of parts and visigraph records showing how it should be done. I ask you all to come up and see the record they have there of building the things in the valley! See the machine that keeps everything running. Then let me have a band of youths to start studying the records until we find out how to keep things running." There was silence after he finished. The Elders eyed him, uneasy, suspicious.