life, and it had become a present handed to us by others. There is no longer any reason to fight. There is no longer anything to attain. All the universe is the property of your race.'
'This world is yours,' said Antyok, gently.
'By sufferance. It is a gift. It is not ours by right'
'You have earned it, in my opinion.'
And now the Cepheid's eyes were sharply fixed on the other's countenance, 'You mean well, but I doubt that you understand. We have nowhere to go, save this gift of a world. We are in a blind alley. The function of life is striving, and that is taken from us. Life can no longer interest us. We have no offspring - voluntarily. It is our way of removing ourselves from your way.'
Absent-mindedly, Antyok had removed the fluoro-globe from the window seat, and spun it on its base. Its gaudy surface reflected light as it spun, and its three-foot-high bulk floated with incongruous grace and lightness in the air.
Antyok said, 'Is that your only solution? Sterility?'
'We might escape still,' whispered the Cepheid, 'but where in the Galaxy is there place for us? It is all yours.'
'Yes, there is no place for you nearer than the Magellame Clouds if you wished independence. The Magellanic Clouds -'
'And you would not let us go of yourselves. You mean kindly, I know.'
'Yes, we mean kindly - but we could not let you go.'
'It is a mistaken kindness.'
'Perhaps, but could you not reconcile yourselves? You have a world.'
'It is something past complete explanations. Your mind is different. We could not reconcile ourselves. I believe, administrator, that you have thought of all this before. The concept of the blind alley we find ourselves trapped in is not new to you.'
Antyok looked up, startled, and one hand steadied the fluoro-globe, 'Can you read my mind?'
'It is just a guess. A good one, I think.'
'Yes - but can you read my mind? The minds of humans in general, I mean. It is an interesting point. The scientists say you cannot, but sometimes I wonder if it is that you simply will not. Could you answer that? I am detaining you, unduly, perhaps.'
'No... no -' But the little Cepheid drew his enveloping robe closer, and buried his face in the electrically-heated pad at the collar for a moment. 'You other-worldlings speak of reading minds. It is not so at all, but it is assuredly hopeless to explain.'
Antyok mumbled the old proverb, 'One cannot explain sight to a man blind from birth.'
'Yes, just so. This sense which you call "mind reading," quite erroneously, cannot be applied to us. It is not that we cannot receive the proper sensations, it is that your people do not transmit them, and we have no way of explaining to you how to go about it.'
'Hm-m-m.'
'There are times, of course, of great concentration or emotional tension on the part of an other-worldling when some of us who are more expert in this sense; more sharp-eyed, so to speak; detect vaguely something. It is uncertain; yet I myself have at times wondered -'
Carefully, Antyok began spinning the fluoro-globe once more. His pink face was set in thought, and his eyes were fixed upon the Cepheid. Gustiv Bannerd stretched his fingers and reread his notes, his lips moving silently.
The fluoro-globe spun, and slowly the Cepheid seemed to grow tense as well, as his eyes shifted to the colorful sheen of the globe's fragile surface.
The Cepheid said, 'What is that?'
Antyok started, and his face smoothed into an almost chuckling placidity, 'This? A Galactic fad of three years ago; which means that it is a hopelessly old-fashioned relic this year. It is a useless device but it looks pretty. Bannerd, could you adjust the windows to non-transmission?'
There was the soft click of a contact, and the windows became curved regions of darkness, while in the center of the room, the fluoro-globe was suddenly the focus of a rosy effulgence that seemed to leap outward in streamers. Antyok, a scarlet figure in a scarlet room, placed it upon the table and spun it with a hand that dripped red. As it spun, the colors changed with a slowly increasing rapidity, blended and fell apart into more extreme contrasts.
Antyok was speaking in an eerie atmosphere of molten, shifting rainbow, 'The surface is of a material that exhibits variable fluorescence. It is almost weightless, extremely fragile, but gyroscopically balanced so that it rarely falls, with ordinary care. It is rather pretty, don't you think?'
From somewhere