ers crowded up, reaching out to pluck at us, but
Snap waved them away and our guard dispersed them.

One of the master brains came bouncing up. Upon his little upright
body the great head wavered.

"You will wait here." His eyes glowed up at us.

"But listen," Snap began.

"You will wait here for the Martian. He has his orders to take you to
the Great Intelligence." The little arm from the side of the head had
a hand with a finger pointing for a gesture. "There is a meeting place
there. We decided now what to do to destroy the warships of your
worlds. I do not like your thoughts; they are black. I will inform the
Great Intelligence when he can spare the thought for you."

He added something in the Wandl tongue. A worker came forward; lifted
him carefully, held him in the hollow of an encircling tentacle. And
with a bound, the worker sailed upward and was gone.

Again we stood through an interval. I noticed now that the towering
structure near us, with its storied balconies, was not perpendicular.
Its front curved up and back. It was convex, somewhat in the fashion
of an irregular globe, a three-hundred foot ball, with a flattened
base set here on the ground. The balconies were segments of its front
curve. At the top, the roof was as though the ball had been sliced
off, like a giant apple with a slice gone for a base and another for
the roof. At the bottom was a huge portal with a glow of light from
within. And at the terraced balcony levels were lighted windows.

"Is that the meeting place?" Snap whispered.

"Probably. And look to the side of it, Snap."

It was a city. There was a vista of distance to one side of the great
globe structure. Now that our eyes were more accustomed to the
queerness of this night upon Wandl, we could ignore the colored
light-beams of the landing stage and the disembarking palisade upon
which we were standing. Gazing into the distance, the curvature of the
surface of this little world was immediately apparent. The reddish
firmament of stars came down to meet the sharply-curving surface at a
horizon line which seemed about a mile away.

Spread upon this near distance were a variety of structures with
little roads of open space winding between them. Most of the buildings
seemed globular in shape. Some were small, little round mound-shaped
individual dwellings. Others were larger. Some were tiered like half a
dozen apples speared in a row upon a stick and set upright.

I saw a ribbo