ideas at all! And we
can't make out some of his. Just now, he seemed to be thinking of
'nourishment' or 'food', and I found out he was thinking of 'heat'!"

"I'll be right down," Arcot told him, heading for the library.

As he entered, Torlos smiled at him; Arcot picked up his thought easily:
"Your friends do not seem to understand my thoughts."

"We are not made as you are," Arcot explained, "and our thought forms
are different. To you, 'heat' and 'food' are practically the same thing,
but we do not think of them as such."

He continued, explaining carefully to Torlos the differences between
their bodies and their methods of using energy.

"Stone bones!" Torlos thought in amazement. "And chemical engines for
muscles! No wonder you seem so weak. And yet, with your brains, I would
hate to have to fight a war with your people!"

"Which brings me to another point," Arcot continued. "We would like to
know how the war between the people of Sator and the people of Nansal
began. Has it been going on very long?"

Torlos nodded. "I will tell you the story. It is a history that began
many centuries ago; a history of persecution and rebellion. And yet, for
all that, I think it an interesting history.

"Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal ..."

XVIII

Hundreds of years ago, on Nansal, there had lived a wise and brilliant
teacher named Norus. He had developed an ideal, a philosophy of life, a
code of ethics. He had taught the principles of nobility without
arrogance, pride without stubbornness, and humility without servility.

About him had gathered a group of men who began to develop and spread
his ideals. As the new philosophy spread across the planet, more and
more Nansalians adopted it and began to raise their children according
to its tenets.

But no philosophy, however workable, however noble, can hope to convert
everyone. There always remains a hard core of men who feel that "the old
way is the best way". In this case, it was the men whose lives had been
based on cunning, deceit, and treachery.

One of these men, a brilliant, but warped genius, named Sator, had built
the first spaceship, and he and his men had fled Nansal to set up their
own government and free themselves from the persecution they believed
they suffered at the hands of the believers of Norus.

They fled to the second planet, where the ship crashed and the builder,
Sator, was killed. For hundreds of years, nothing was heard of the
emigran