“Which star is the Overlord’s sun?”
Rupert checked a whistle of surprise. Maia and Benny showed no reaction at all. Jean had closed her eyes and seemed to be asleep. Rashaverak had leaned forward so that he could look down into the circle over Rupert’s shoulder.
And the plate began to move.
When it came to rest again, there was a brief pause: then Ruth asked, in a puzzled voice:
“What does NGS 549672 mean?”
She got no reply, for at the same moment George called out anxiously:
“Give me a hand with Jean. I’m afraid she’s fainted.”
9
“This man Boyce,” said Karellen. “Tell me all about him.” The Supervisor did not use those actual words, of course, and the thoughts he really expressed were far more subtle. A human listener would have heard a short burst of rapidly modulated sound, not unlike a high-speed Morse sender in action. Though many samples of Overlord language had been recorded, they all defied analysis because of their extreme complexity. The speed of transmission made it certain that no interpreter, even if he had mastered the elements of the language, could ever keep up with the Overlords in their normal conversation.
The Supervisor for Earth stood with his back to Rashaverak, staring out across the multicoloured gulf of the Grand Canyon. Ten kilometres away, yet scarcely veiled by distance, the terraced walls were catching the full force of the sun. Hundreds of metres down the shadowed slope at whose brim Karellen stood, a mule-train was slowly winding its way into the valley’s depths. It was strange, Karellen thought, that so many human beings still seized every opportunity for primitive behaviour. They could reach the bottom of the canyon in a fraction of the time, and in far greater comfort, if they chose. Yet they preferred to be jolted along tracks which were probably as unsafe as they looked.