eturning to reclaim their former world."

"The probability must be evaluated and considered. Was it or was it not
through human aid that the Omans destroyed most of our task-force?"

"Highly probable, but impossible of evaluation with the data now
available."

"Obtain more data at once. That point must be and shall be fully
evaluated and fully considered. This entire situation is intolerable. It
must be abated."

"True, First Lord. But every operator and operation is now tightly
screened. Oh, if I could only go out there myself ..."

"Hold, fool! Your thought is completely disloyal and un-Strettly."

"True, oh First Lord Thinker Zoyar. I will forthwith remove my unworthy
self from this plane of existence."

"You will not! I hereby abolish that custom. Our numbers are too few by
far. Too many have failed to adapt. Also, as Second Thinker, your death
at this time would be slightly detrimental to certain matters now in
work. I will myself, however, slay the unfit. To that end repeat The
Words under my peyondiring."

"I am a Strett. I will devote my every iota of mental and of physical
strength to forwarding the Great Plan. I am, and will remain, a Strett."

"You do believe in The Words."

* * * * *

"Of course I believe in them! I _know_ that in a few more hundreds of
thousands of years we will be rid of material bodies and will become
invincible and invulnerable. Then comes the Conquest of the Galaxy ...
and then the Conquest of the Universe!"

"No more, then, on your life, of this weak and cowardly repining! Now,
what of your constructive thinking?"

"Programming must be such as to obviate time-lag. We must evaluate the
factors already mentioned and many others, such as the reactivation of
the spacecraft which was thought to have been destroyed so long ago.
After having considered all these evaluations, I will construct a Minor
Plan to destroy these Omans, whom we have permitted to exist on
sufferance, and with them that shipload of despicably interloping
humans."

"That is well." Zoyar's mind seethed with a malevolent ferocity starkly
impossible for any human mind to grasp. "And to that end?"

"To that end we must intensify still more our program of procuring data.
We must revise our mechs in the light of our every technological advance
during the many thousands of cycles since the last such revision was
made. Our every instrument of power, of offense and of defense, must