For a quarter of an hour I talked, patiently repeating and demonstrating the facts. But still their eyes were glazed with bewilderment and the ghosts of hidden fears. Since they had no understanding of the processing of ore, how could I explain away the appearance of the supernatural? Even when I disassembled the machine, I proved nothing except that I was tinged with godhood myself. Baiel stood smirking, saying nothing. When I turned on him in anger, he said quietly: "Earthmen understand reason, Theusaman." It was the first time he had dropped my title, and he did so intentionally. "These animals--this amusing burlesque of real men--I'm afraid you ask too much of them." "I ask nothing but their right to survive and evolve, as we did." "But they can't. Haven't you learned that yet?" Still smiling, he slid off the pile of rock and went into the cave. I followed him. One by one, the members of the expedition gathered around us. Slowly fifteen women and six men grouped themselves behind Baiel. The rest of the Earthmen were with me. Baiel was outnumbered and most of his people were unarmed, but they faced us with a peculiarly firm kind of confidence. "I think it's time we had an understanding," I said. "I'm still in command here, Baiel, and--" "In command? Of a ship that will never fly again, and an expedition that can never return to Earth? In another ten years, Theusaman, the glacier will have moved over the _Olympus_. It will be ground into dust." "That's hardly the point." "It writes finale to the past. It means this planet is ours--it must be--whether we want it or not." "Ours, and theirs, Baiel." He threw back his head and laughed. "In the Academy, Theusaman, we're taught to face reality, not to romanticize it. This tribe is semi-human, if you like; I'm charitable enough to grant that. But they aren't men, any more than the primitive species on the Earth were men. Observe the skull of your--your bride, if you will; observe the idiocy in her vacant eyes; observe--" "This is man as he was, Baiel! You pointed that out to me yourself." * * * * * "On the contrary, I was simply discussing the Bonn Hypothesis. I never said I believed it. On the Earth, Theusaman, before true man appeared, nature created a number of semi-men--homo-failures, you might say. They weren't men; they grew to the limits of their physical potential, but they never achieved human rationality. At the end of the Earth's ice age, the continents were widely populated by the last of nature's failures. Then, abruptly--we've never known where he originated, or how--man himself came on the scene. Overnight he wiped out the half-men and took over the planet. Man has come here, now, Theusaman; these failures will survive only so long as we need them. At the moment, they constitute a convenient labor force. A handful of us can control them by controlling their gods."