lly they kept me informed, as they wandered up the narrow
valley. The soil was firm and amazingly fertile. Vegetation grew thickly
everywhere. They reached the far end of the valley at last, and rocky
ramparts towered over them.

Then it was--how can I begin to describe it to you, Exalted Empress?
From _their minds_, coming back to me, was a sudden flood of excited,
hysterical thought! It seemed filled with intense loathing and fear!
Imagine me there, if you can--helpless--and in a frenzy of despair
wondering what they could have encountered!

Desperately I extended my potential. I managed to intuit a fierce battle
in which they were engaging. And some of my companions were dying!
Hordes of fierce denizens from the rocks above were descending upon
them. They had taken weapons along, true--but I could sense now by their
frantic thought that these war-like creatures of Terra numbered in the
hundreds, with hordes of them swarming from beyond!

For a long while the battle raged, then I sensed that my companions were
retreating. Oh, I was glad! Glad! At least I would not be left alone.
But of the two score who had ventured out, only _six_ returned. As they
operated the lock of the ship, and tumbled in, I could see--or rather
_perceive_--a long part of the terrain behind them.

Then it was that my mind sickened. _For the creatures of this bright new
world were--Termans!_ Slightly different from those we had battled on
Diskra, true. These were even more monstrous, over six feet tall, with
long shaggy manes and a reddish fuzz covering their four limbs ... and O
Beneficence, I swear it--_sickening blue eyes_! They walked upright and
carried crude weapons, shafts of wood fitted with sharp-edged _stone_!

Not until much later did my returning companions tell me what they had
seen through their telescopic lenses. Just beyond this valley were vast
plains where the Termans seemed to number in the thousands, huge nomadic
tribes of them. There were other creatures as well, some massive beyond
all belief, others fierce and blood-lusting with huge saber-like teeth.

"We could colonize Terra indeed," was the consensus of our thoughts, "but
at what a price! To be forever battling these creatures--particularly the
Termans, that abominable _genus Homo_...."

Can you imagine, O Empress Uldulla, how the irony of it bit us? It was
almost more than we could bear to think that on Diskra our own _genus
Formicae_ was in life-or-death struggle