"Consider, please, that we learned first of the thought-screens from Helmuth; who was then of the opinion that they were first used in the Tellurian Galaxy by the natives of Velantia. This belief was amended later, in discredited reports, to one that said devices did in fact originate upon Arisia. This later conclusion we may now accept as a fact, since the Arisians could and did break such screens by the application of mental forces either of greater magnitude than they could withstand or of some new and as yet unknown composition or pattern.
"Such screens were, however, and probably still are, used largely and commonly upon the planet Velantia. Therefore they must have been both necessary and adequate. The deduction is, I believe, defensible that they were used as a protection against entities who were, and who still may be, employing against the Velantians the weapons of pure thought which we wish to investigate and to acquire.
"I propose, then, that I and a few others of my selection continue this research, not upon Arisia, but upon Velantia and perhaps elsewhere."
To this suggestion there was no demur and a vessel set out forthwith. The visit to Velantia was simple and created no untoward disturbance whatever. In this connection it must be remembered that the natives of Velantia, then in the early ecstasies of discovery by the Galactic Patrol and the consequent acquisition of inertialess flight, were fairly reveling in visits to and from the widely-variant peoples of the planets of hundreds of other suns. It must be borne in mind that, since the Eich were, if anything, physically more like the Velantians than were the men of Tellus, the presence of a group of such entities upon the planet would create no more interest or comment than that of a group of human beings. Therefore that fateful visit went unnoticed at the time, and as it was only by long and arduous research, after Kinnison had deduced that some such visit must have been made, that it was shown to have been an actuality.
Space forbids any detailed account of what the Ninth of Boskone and his fellows did, although that story of itself would be no mean epic. Suffice it to say, then, that they became well acquainted with the friendly Velantians; they studied and they learned. Particularly did they seek information concerning the noisome Overlords of Delgon, although the natives did not care to dwell at any length upon the subject.
"Their power is broken," they were wont to inform the questioners, with airy flirtings of tail and wing. "Every known cavern of them, and not a few hitherto unknown caverns, have been blasted out of existence. Whenever one of them dares to obtrude his mentality upon any one of us he is at once hunted down and slain. Even if they are not all dead, as we think, they certainly are no longer a menace to our peace and security."
Having secured all the information available upon Velantia, the Eich went to Delgon, where they devoted all the power of their admittedly first-grade minds and all the not inconsiderate resources of their ship to the task of finding and uniting the remnants of what had once been a flourishing race, the Overlords of Delgon.
The Overlords! That monstrous, repulsive, amoral race which, not excepting even the Eich themselves, achieved the most universal condemnation ever to have been given in the long history of the Galactic Union. The Eich, admittedly deserving of the fate which was theirs, had and have their apologists. The Eich were wrong-minded, all admit. They were anti-social, blood-mad, obsessed with an insatiable lust for power and conquest which nothing except complete extinction could extirpate. Their evil attributes were legion. They were, however, brave. They were organizers par excellence. They were, in their own fashion, creators and doers. They had the courage of their convictions and followed them to the bitter end.
Of the Overlords, however, nothing good has ever been said. They were debased, cruel, perverted to a degree starkly unthinkable to any normal intelligence, however housed. In their native habitat they had no weapons, nor need of any. Through sheer power of mind they reached out to their victims, even upon other planets, and forced them to come to the gloomy caverns in which they had their being. There the victims were tortured to death in numberless unspeakable fashions, and while they died the captors fed, ghoulishly, upon the departing life principle of the sufferer.