g his way out scratch by scratch. Disappeared,
died, dead, gone, mingled off with the myriad of worlds--did one get
home, perhaps, to start their legend of the gods in the sky; the legend
that never dies through the rise and fall of culture from savagery to
... to ... to Element 109?"

Chelan looked at Jerry Markham, the Terran looked back defiantly as if
he were guest instead of captive. "Co-operate," breathed Chelan.

"I'll tell you nothing. Force me. I can't stop that."

Chelan shook his head sorrowfully. "Extracting what you know would be
less than the play of a child," he said. "No, Terran. We can know what
you know in the turn of a dial. What we need is that which you do not
know. Laugh? Or is that a sneer? No matter. What you know is worthless.
Your problems and your ambitions, both racial and personal, are minor.
We know them already. The pattern is repetitive, only some of the names
are changed.

"But why? Ah, that we must know. Why are you what you are? Seven times
in History Terra has come up from the mud, seven times along the same
route. Seven times a history of ten thousand years from savage to
savant, from beast to brilliance and always with the same will to
do--to do what? To die for what? To fight for what?"

Chelan waved Huvane to take the Terran away.

* * * * *

Huvane said, "He's locked in air-tight with guards who can be trusted.
Now what do we do with him?"

"He will co-operate."

"By force?"

"No, Huvane. By depriving him of the one thing that Life cannot exist
without."

"Food? Safety?"

Chelan shook his head. "More primitive than these." He lowered his
voice. "He suffers now from being cut off from his kind. Life starts,
complaining about the treatment it receives during the miracle of birth
and crying for its first breath of air. Life departs gasping for air,
with someone listening for the last words, the last message from the
dying. Communication, Huvane, is the primary drive of all Life, from
plant to animal to man--and if such exists, superman.

"Through communication Life goes on. Communication is the prime
requisite to procreation. The firefly signals his mate by night, the
human male entices his woman with honeyed words and is not the gift of a
jewel a crystalline, enduring statement of his undying affection?"

Chelan dropped his flowery manner and went on in a more casual vein:
"Huvane, boil it down to the least attractive form of simplif