ure of communication. On
Oasis we had to talk with our hands." It groaned, grotesquely human in
its agony. "Can you imagine living for centuries without the joy of
conversation?" it asked pitifully.

Circe shook her head. "I don't much blame you," she said in a small
voice.

Daley came back. He handed a small rough bar of lead to Pink. The
Captain's mind seethed with questions he longed to ask; but the reaction
of the battle was settling in with vengeance, and he could not see this
great paralyzed brute live on because of his own more or less idle
curiosity. He bent forward from the chair. "Sorry," he said, and dropped
the bar onto its chest.

"Wait!" said Jerry. "How did you know how to spell _phony_?"

The djinni made a small hissing noise that had something in it of
contentment. Its eyes turned jetty, and they knew it was dead.

"It died happy," said Daley to the slim O. O. "It knew it was leaving us
a problem that we'd never solve. What a--what a malicious character it
was!"

"Poor devil," said Circe. "No conversation for five hundred years!"

CHAPTER XXV

Four days later Pinkham and Circe stood quietly before a scanner screen,
Pink leaning on a cane, and watched the great lead vat and then the
multitude of bottles go tumbling into space. "We are giving them a
chance of survival," mused Circe. "There's about one chance in a billion
that some day they'll be found and released again."

"I wonder," said Pink, "if they did predate man in evolution? Or if they
were originally native to another planet that expelled 'em? There were
always legends of giants and ogres and djinn and demons on earth, myths
that started to die out about the time this late friend of ours left the
globe for good. Maybe the djinni developed side by side with man, but
was limited because of his flaws. There are a million life-forms in the
universe so alien to man as to be unexplainable, and a lot of them are
right home on Terra."

Circe shook her dark head. "Is the whole thing real, Pink? Or is it a
fantasy we've uncovered out here in the void?"

"Every damn thing about them is scientifically possible. But I know how
you feel--it seems like a fairy story. If so many good guys weren't dead
back there, I'd disbelieve it myself." He scowled a moment, then looked
at her and brightened. "Honey," he said, "remind me that I have to send
a radio message to Earth as soon as we're close enough."

"Radio message? What?"

"A sort of te