the ship to the ground, and continue from there.
Will that be all right?"

Torlos agreed that it would.

Invisible, the _Ancient Mariner_ dove down toward the city, stopping
only a few hundred feet from the base of the magnetic wall, near one of
the gigantic beam stations.

"I will come out in a one-man flier, slowly, and at low altitude, toward
that mountain there," Torlos told Arcot, pointing. "Then you may become
visible and follow me into the city.

"You need fear no treachery from my people," he assured them. Then,
smiling: "As if you need fear treachery from the hands of any people!
You have certainly proven your ability to defend yourselves!

"Even if my people were treacherously inclined, they would certainly
have been convinced by your escape from the Satorians. And they have
undoubtedly heard all about it by now through the secret radios of our
spies. After all, I was not the only Nansalian spy there, and some of
the others must surely have escaped in the ships that ran away after I
destroyed the city." Arcot could feel the sadness in his mind as he
thought of the fact that his inadvertent destruction of the city had
undoubtedly killed some of his own people.

Torlos paused a moment, then asked: "Is there any message you wish me to
give the Supreme Council of Three?"

"Yes," replied Arcot. "Repeat to them the offer we so foolishly made to
the Commanding One of Sator. We will give them the molecular ray which
tore the city out of the ground, and, as your people have seen, also
tore a mountain down. We will give them our heat beam, which will melt
anything except the material of which this ship is made. And we will
give them the knowledge to make this material, too.

"Best of all, we will give them the secret of the most terrific energy
source known to mankind; the energy of matter itself. With these in your
hands, Sator will soon be peaceful.

"In return, we ask only two things. They will cost you almost nothing,
but they are invaluable to us. We have lost our way. In the vastness of
space, we can no longer locate our own galaxy. But our own Island
Universe has features which could be distinguished on an astronomical
plate, and we have taken photographs of it which your astronomers can
compare with their own to help us find our way back.

"In addition, we need more fuel--lead wire. Our space control drive does
not use up energy except in the presence of a strong gravitational
field; most of it is d