the room, to reveal that the
cave cat was gone. He fired again, quickly and immediately in front of
him. The pale beam revealed only the ripped metal floor.

"_I am not where you think._"

The words spoke clearly in his mind but there was no directional source.
He held his breath, listening for the whisper of padded feet as the cave
cat flashed in for the kill, and made a swift analysis of the situation.

The cave cat was telepathic and highly intelligent and had been on the
ship all the time. It and the others had wanted the ship and had killed
Johnny to reduce opposition to the minimum. He, himself, had been
permitted to live until the cave cat learned from his mind how to
operate the almost-automatic controls. Now, he had served his purpose--

"_You are wrong._"

Again there was no way he could determine the direction from which the
thought came. He listened again, and wondered why it had not waylaid him
at the door.

Its thought came:

"_I had to let you see me or you would not have believed I existed. It
was only here that I could extinguish all lights and have time to speak
before you killed me. I let you think your brother was here...._" There
was a little pause. "_I am sorry. I am sorry. I should have used some
other method of luring you here._"

He swung the blaster toward what seemed to be a faint sound near the
astrogator unit across the room.

"_We did not intend to kill your brother._"

He did not believe it and did not reply.

"_When we made first telepathic contact with him, he jerked up his
blaster and fired. In his mind was the conviction that we had pretended
to be harmless animals so that we could catch him off-guard and kill
him. One of us leaped at him as he fired the second time, to knock the
blaster from his hand. We needed only a few minutes in which to
explain--but he would not trust us that long. There was a misjudgment of
distance and he was knocked off the cliff._"

Again he did not reply.

"_We did not intend to kill your brother_," the thought came, "_but you
do not believe me_."

* * * * *

He spoke for the first time. "No, I don't believe you. You are
physically like cats and cats don't misjudge distances. Now, you want
something from me before you try to kill me, too. What is it?"

"_I will have to tell you of my race for you to understand. We call
ourselves the Varn, in so far as it can be translated into a spoken
word, and we are a v