Aside from the anticipated questions, no one spoke while Hfathon talked. For the first fifteen minutes he sped through the evolution of life on Thrrillkrwillutaut, the planet of the Krsh. (Orme noticed that he never said what star it orbited.) Life there had developed much like that on Earth; the Krsh had evolved from an apelike creature.

'Similar planets produce similar life forms,' Hfathon said. 'At least, those we found have done so. Though I must admit that we encountered only two others like yours and ours. One was still in the Palaeolithic. The other, well, I'll get to that.'

Prehistory and history had progressed through the various stone ages, the bronze, iron, and plastic-electronic-atomic ages. As on Terra, there had been different races. Representatives of all these had been on the starship which had set out for interstellar exploration. But while on Mars miscegenation had made the Krsh a homogeneous people.

Orme was entranced when he saw the holograms of the Krsh civilisation. Even then, two thousand years ago, no, more, since who knew how long the voyage had lasted before the ship came to Earth, these people had a science and technology that made Earth's seem primitive.

Then why hadn't Krsh science developed even more? It didn't seem any more advanced than when they had left their home. In fact, in many respects it had regressed. Most of the Martians used horses for riding and ploughing. Cattle and horse manure were the chief fertilisers.

Hfathon's exposition of the building of the starship and the launching made Orme forget his questions. The vessel was truly colossal, much larger than the exposed portion had suggested. Whatever its form of propulsion - Hfathon omitted that - it must have been incredibly powerful. It hadn't been constructed in orbit; it had lifted directly from the planet's surface.

There were fascinating holograms of life aboard the ship, though activity there was limited. The voyagers took turns manning the vessel or lying in suspended animation.

'It took forty years, travelling at one-quarter of the speed of light, to reach the first system,' Hfathon said.

There were flashes of holograms of a world which resembled that of Earth circa 20,000 BC. The beings were humanoid but had pointed ears, catlike eyes, and teeth which clearly indicated their purely carnivorous origin.

'On this world evolution took a slightly different path. The Divine Presence guided a primitive form of feline towards sapiency.'

The second voyage was to a star which, like Earth's, the Krsh's, and the third planet, was a G-type.

'This trip lasted fifty-five years of objective time,' Hfathon said.

Here the Krsh found two inhabited planets, the third and fourth out from the luminary.

The fourth planet had recently been deluged with vibration bombs (Hfathon didn't define these), but there were survivors, tiny groups wandering the land, trying to find food and at the same time escape the conquerors.

'Apparently it was the beings from the third planet who had won,' Hfathon said. 'We don't know what they called themselves, but we do have photographs of them.'

A screen showed a squat, heavily boned, heavily muscled creature dressed in what looked like chainmail. In its broad-fingered hand it held a silvery helmet with a serrated crest. A close-up of the fingers, however, showed that it lacked nails.

The head was much like an Earthman's, but the creature could never have passed for one. Instead of hair it had short thick bristles reminding Orme of a porcupine's quills, though they could have been much more pliable. The skull was larger in proportion to the body than that of a normal Terrestrial's. The ears had somewhat different convolutions, and the tips were split into two long fleshy parts. The chin was very massive. The lips extended almost to the lower jawbone. Its mouth was open, revealing quite human teeth. The nose was very short and broad but the bridge bore a round hump from which a few quills projected.

The eyebrows were thick, their hairs, or quills, corkscrewy. The upper and lower eyelids moved when it blinked, one going up, the other down. The lower was blue-black, the higher, the same colour as the facial skin and the hands, reddish-brown. The eyes were a solid russet.

'Other specimens show different skin, eye, and hair colours,' Hfathon said. 'But all their hearts are black. Or perhaps I should say, to be charitable, that the heart of its government is evil. There may be good people on that world. Whatever the case, we were attacked without warning, though we had come in peace.'

Fortunately for the Krsh, they were equipped for self-defence. And their weapons were superior, though not overwhelmingly so.

Orme noted that Hfathon did not specify the nature of the weapons.

The two ships that tried to destroy the Krsh were themselves destroyed. Still, the Krsh made an attempt to communicate with the aliens, but it was ignored, and another attacker was annihilated. Forced to abort their exploration, the Krsh departed for the next star on their schedule: Earth's sun.

'But the Sons of Darkness pursued us, though we were not aware of that until some time after we'd reached Earth. There we placed the ship into orbit. After observing that we could easily handle any armed attack from the primitive peoples of Earth, we sent down a survey ship. Many specimens of plant and animal life were picked up and frozen to be taken back to Thrrillkrwillutaut.

'Obtaining samples of the sentient life presented a problem. We were forbidden to abduct any, since that would violate our ethical standards. But we did as we had off the first planet we visited. We flew around until we observed beings in dangerous situations, including illness. We rescued them hoping that their gratitude would be so great that they would willingly co-operate in our study of them. Afterwards, they would be released near the place where they were picked up.'

Hfathon paused to drink fruit juice.

'Of course, we hoped that some of those would be curious enough to wish to return with us. We had had no luck on the Palaeolithic planet. Our "guests" were too tribal; they would have died if removed from their own people too long. So, after studying them, we returned them.

'But here were civilised people, though mightily uncivilised from our point of view. Out of the two hundred we got, fifty were so hysterical with fear that we quickly put them back where we'd found them. Most of those left were from the Mediterranean lands or from a land through which ran a great river called Sindhu, or they were from the far east. The latter were brown people with epicanthic folds. A few were from a city in the middle of a continent across an ocean west of the largest continent. Or east.'

Here Hfathon interrupted his lecture to ask the four if they had names for these.

'The land of the Sindhu river would be India,' Orme said. 'The far east people would be Chinese or other Mongolians. The land that connects the two continents would be Central America and the people from there would, I suppose, be Mayans. By the great continent I think you mean three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia.'

'We thought it was one continent,' Hfathon said. 'It looks like one land mass from the photos I've seen.'

'They may be connected, but they're three separate continents,' Orme said. 'Though, actually, Europe isn't. It's considered to be a separate land mass because of historic and racial reasons. But that big land mass to the west of Eurasia is also two continents, North and South America. The narrow portion where you got the Mayans or whatever they were is Central America. It connects the two.'