But it was the youngest, a mere youth of ten thousand years, upon whose head but a single eye showed, who pointed out the path. He was already bored with this meeting; besides, he had but fallen in love the day before and wanted to get back to his amorata.
"Why all this fuss?" he asked. "What's more, we don't have scientists, or mathematicians, or warriors. If the giants weren't so stupid we'd never capture them. So let's stop this foolishness, this dreaming...."
That was the clue. After all, Hiah-Leugh hadn't been made chief of all the Gomans for nothing. He proved his right to the leadership then.
"That's it!" he said. "The artists and writers of the human world have made monsters of us, even though we can't do any of the things they pretend we can. There is but a single attribute we possess which they have said we do. We can project ourselves through space and time. So let us to the Earth, and pluck one or two of these humans, and if I may offer a suggestion, let us take a writer and artist from among them and bring them back with us...."
Harry Zmilch, writer-extraordinary of science-fiction, passed weary fingers across a furrowed brow. A few feet to the rear of the desk at which Zmilch labored stood the drawing board of Jack Gangreneyellow, the artist. He too paused in his labors. At one and the same instant they turned and regarded each other with solemn, staring eyes.
"No use, Joe," Harry said. "I can't do it. I've beaten my brain until it refuses to function. I keep typing the same word over and over again ... nuts ... nuts!... Bug-eyed monsters! There aren't such things. My imagination just can't bring them to paper."
"Nor can mine to the board," Jack said.
"Still it's easier for you," Harry said. "All you've got to do is draw a spider or huge bug of sorts, put a man and woman somewhere in the drawing, make the woman appear as if she'd lost half her clothes in a struggle, and you've got your piece. With me it's different."
Gangreneyellow snorted. This character, he thought, knew as little of art and the difficulties of composition as the next guy.