He leaned over her and called softly:
"Spira!"
As though awakening from a spell, Spira opened her golden eyes. They fixed themselves on Erik's sorrowful face, and they widened. She smiled.
But, with growing horror, Birkala realized it was not the smile of Spira, the sister of his childhood. It carried no message of recognition nor of intelligence. It was the pitiful smile of mindlessness.
She gurgled.
Erik helped her to sit up, and she stared about her wonderingly.
"You have looked on me as an alien, Birkala," he said sternly, "but we are of the same humanity. The mother of your race, too, was Earth. But while the far-flung children of Earth had to start as pioneers to build the cultures of their varied worlds, the men of Earth forged ahead through the millennia in their climb toward whatever estate may one day be the goal of mankind.
"We of Earth who come to your worlds are watchers to help you avoid some of the pitfalls we know may divert you from that same path we have trod, and destroy you. When you think of me as a man, Birkala, you think of me as one who knows the secret of long life and has a physical science in advance of your own. But the difference is far more: there are thresholds beyond the physical which you cannot comprehend, and beyond these thresholds the man of Earth has gone and explored and moves ever outward."
"I know this must be true," murmured Birkala brokenly, stroking his sister's yellow-green hair. "I wronged you, Erik."
"No, you wronged yourself, Birkala, and your people. Because you stand at the pinnacle of your own science, you thought you could step forward into ours. Because the words 'beam transmitter' signify technology to you, you would not understand that no physical means of transportation could transcend the limiting speed of light. You could not understand that this thing called, in your language, a beam transmitter, reaches out into unguessed dimensions.