Then the shock began to wear off, and his mind to function more clearly. This place with its sloping wall was a compartment in the Tellurian spacecraft, that much was now obvious. Yet they had trusted him within it ... armed. And they had been kind to him, they had nursed him back to health after the Guski's wound almost killed him. Why? It was not enough that he had great influence with the Laurr. He had had the feeling that they liked him. Could it be, he wondered, that the whole basic philosophy of the Maldia was in error? The Temple spoke of mighty Tellurian science. Could it actually do what the High Superior of Dorliss claimed? Redeem the planet and give it hope again?
And there was Leslie. In that moment of introspection, Telis knew with a distinct shock that, Tellurian or not, he loved her. Telis of Lars, peer of the ancient realm of Laurr, member of the dread, anti-Tellurian Maldia, was in love with an alien woman! Creature of another world—different and strange—and yet he loved her! Standing there, watching her tears course down her cheeks, he felt his heart constrict, and he knew that she had won.
"Please, Telis—my Telis—let me show that we can be friends!" she cried.
Telis stared at her. "Friends?" he asked thickly.
Leslie took a step nearer, her eyes suddenly wide, almost afraid. It came to Telis in a blinding flash of insight that she too was feeling the soul-wrenching conflicts of love for an alien creature. To her Telis was the exotic, the outlander.
Then like the snapping of a steel wire, the barrier was broken, and she was in his arms, returning his kisses with an almost desperate abandon....
The Tellurian camp was a revelation to Telis. Guided by Leslie and a group of Tellurian scientists, he beheld machines such as had not existed on the surface of Laurr for ten thousand haads. Here, among the squat, pressurized domes of the camp were the end-products of all the theories the Temple had salvaged from the lost books of the ancients.
Power was drawn from the destruction of infinitesimal particles of matter by a mysterious process the scientist referred to as "fission," and Telis found to his surprise that Leslie was not a noblewoman as he had supposed, but something called a "metallurgist." These terms meant nothing to him, but the teeming activity of the camp and the matter of fact way in which miracles were daily performed made him begin to understand what the High Superior had meant when he had said that together the races of Terra and Laurr might one day rule the solar system. The machines and the magnificent, graceful projectile that was the spaceship fired Telis' imagination.
If any doubt remained in his mind, it was shattered irretrievably when Leslie showed him the mining operations. Thus far, they had begun only on an experimental basis, the Tellurians wisely wary of extending themselves before permission to remain was granted by the Laurr. But, even on a small scale, what Telis saw stirred him more deeply than had any of the other wondrous things he had been shown.