relieved.

"Well, I have some good news," he said and smiled, sitting down. "Follow
that bunch, Morey, and I'll tell you about it. Set it and she'll hold
nicely. We have a long way to go, and those are slow freighters,
accompanied by one Cruiser.

"Those men," he began, "are men of Venone. You remember Thett's records
said something of the Mighty Warless Ones of Venone? Those are they.
They inhabit most of this universe, leaving the Thessians but four
planets of a minor sun, way off in one corner. It seems the Thessians
are their undesirable exiles, those who have, from generation to
generation, been either forced to go there, or who wanted to go there.

"They did not like the easier and more effective method of disposing of
undesirables, the instantaneous death chamber they now use. Thett was
their prison world. No one ever returned and his family could go with
him if they desired, but if they did not, they were carefully watched
for outcroppings of undesirable traits--murder, crime of any sort, any
habitual tendency to injustice.

"About six hundred years ago of our time, Thett revolted. There were
scientists there, and their scientists had discovered a thing that they
had been seeking for generations--the Twin-ray. I don't know what it is,
and the Venonians don't either. It is the ray that destroys relux and
lux, however, and can be carried only on a machine the size of their
forts, due to some limitations. Just what those limitations are the
Venonians don't know. Other than that ray they had no new weapons.

"But it was enough. Their guard ships which had circled the worlds of
the prison system, Antseck, were suddenly destroyed, so suddenly that
Venone received no word of it till a consignment ship, bringing
prisoners, discovered their absence. The consignment ship returned
without landing. Thett was now independent. But they were bound to their
system, for although they had the molecular ships, they had never been
permitted to have time apparatus, nor to see it, nor was any one who
knew its principles ever consigned there. The result was that they were
as isolated as ever.

"This was for two centuries. Two centuries later it was worked out by
one of their scientists, and the Warless Ones had a War of defense.
Their small fleet of cruisers, designed for rescue work and for clearing
space lanes of wrecks and asteroids, was destroyed instantly, their
world was protected only by the ray screen, which the Thessia