Morning came, a reversal of the previous evening. The liquid evaporated; the mud dried; the flat-growing vegetation sprang up with shocking speed; the animals emerged and again ate and were eaten.
And eventually came Tregonsee's announcement that it was noon; and that now, for an hour or so, it would be calm enough for the space ship to leave the port.
"You are sure that I would be of no help to you?" asked the Rigellian, half pleadingly.
"Sorry, Tregonsee, but you would fit into my matrix just as I would into yours here. But here's the spool I told you about. If you will take it to your base on your next relief you will do civilization and the patrol more good than you could by coming with us. Thanks for the Bergenholm, which is covered by credits, and thanks a lot for your help and courtesy, which can't be covered. Good-by." The now entirely spaceworthy craft shot out through the port, through Trenco's noxiously peculiar atmosphere, into the vacuum of space.
XI.
"Shapley holds that these (star) clusters, under the gravitative control of the larger system, vibrate back and forth through the galaxy." Fath, "Elements of Astronomy," p. 297.
At some distance from the galaxy, yet shackled to it by the flexible yet powerful bonds of gravitation, the small but comfortable planet upon which was Helmuth's base circled about its parent sun. This planet had been chosen with the utmost care, and its location was a secret guarded jealously indeed. Scarcely one in a million of Boskone's teeming millions knew even that such a planet existed; and of the chosen few who had ever been asked to visit it, fewer still by far had been allowed to leave it.
Grand Base covered hundreds of square miles of that planet's surface. It was equipped with all the arms and armament known to the military genius of the age; and in the exact center of that immense citadel there arose a glittering metallic dome.