Sky Fire--that's Alpha--will burn
up the whole world."

"But this happens every ninety years. Mean they always acted this way at
periastron?"

He shook his head. "Race would have exterminated itself long ago if they
had. No, this is something special. The coming of the Terrans was a
sign. The Terrans came and brought oomphel to the world; this a sign
that the Last Hot Time is at hand."

"What the devil _is_ oomphel?" The lieutenant was mopping the back of
his neck with one hand, now, and trying to pull his sticky tunic loose
from his body with the other. "I hear that word all the time."

"Well, most Terrans, including the old Kwannon hands, use it to mean
trade-goods. To the natives, it means any product of Terran technology,
from paper-clips to spaceships. They think it's ... well, not exactly
supernatural; extranatural would be closer to expressing their idea.
Terrans are natural; they're just a different kind of people. But
oomphel isn't; it isn't subject to any of the laws of nature at all.
They're all positive that we don't make it. Some of them even think it
makes us."

When he got back in the car, the native pilot, Heshto, was lolling in
his seat and staring at the crowd of natives along the side of the
gathering-place with undisguised disdain. Heshto had been educated at
one of the Native Welfare Commission schools, and post-graded with
Kwannon Planetwide News. He could speak, read and write Lingua Terra. He
was a mathematician as far as long division and decimal fractions. He
knew that Kwannon was the second planet of the Gettler Beta system,
23,000 miles in circumference, rotating on its axis once in 22.8
Galactic Standard hours and making an orbital circuit around Gettler
Beta once in 372.06 axial days, and that Alpha was an M-class pulsating
variable with an average period of four hundred days, and that Beta
orbited around it in a long elipse every ninety years. He didn't believe
there was going to be a Last Hot Time. He was an intellectual, he was.

He started the contragravity-field generator as soon as Miles was in his
seat. "Where now, boss?" he asked.

"Qualpha's Village. We won't let down; just circle low over it. I want
some views of the ruins. Then to Sanders' plantation."

"O.K., boss; hold tight."

He had the car up to ten thousand feet. Aiming it in the map direction
of Qualpha's Village, he let go with everything he had--hot jets,
rocket-booster and all. The forest landscape came hur