Delicately Lur sought a way into the other's mind, twisting down paths
of thought strange to him. Even Varta could not follow the subtile waves
sent forth in the quick examination and reconnoitering, nor could she
understand all of the conversation which resulted. For the man from the
ancient ship answered in speech aloud, sharp harsh sounds of no meaning.
It was only after repeated instruction from Lur that he began to frame
his messages in his mind, clumsily and disconnectedly.
Pictures of another world, another solar system, began to grow more
clear as the space man became more at home in the new way of
communication. He was one of a race who had come to Erb from beyond the
stars and discovered it a world without human life: So they had
established colonies and built great cities--far different from
Memphir--and had lived in peace for centuries of their own time.
Then on the faraway planet of their birth there had begun a great war, a
war which brought flaming death to all that world. The survivors of a
last battle in outer space had fled to the colonies on Erb. But among
this handful were men driven mad by the death of their world, and these
had blasted the cities of Erb, saying that their kind must be wiped out.
The man they had rescued had turned against one such maddened leader and
had been imprisoned just before an attack upon the largest of the
colony's cities. After that he remembered nothing.
Varta stopped trying to follow the conversation--Lur was only explaining
now how they had found the space man and brought him out of the wrecked
ship.
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