She smiled tremulously. "I hoped that you could lead us back. But you too had lost the way of return."
"But why? What made your people come to the Here?"
The pain of ancient tragedy was in Xintel's eyes as she told the story.
"Around us nearly everywhere are creatures, living creatures, small beyond all normal sight," she explained.
"There." She pointed to the light. "And another sort live in the paste which produces gas. My people were always clever at making use of them.
"In the Above live many more types of these unseen creatures. My people became too clever—but they were not as clever as they thought."
She glanced at Barry and spoke with earnest seriousness. "Some of them, incredibly tiny as they are, are deadly. They get inside a person, causing him to sicken and die, killing as surely as a spear thrust."
She hesitated as though expecting the Earthman to hoot in derision at such an idea, and continued only when he nodded slowly.
"There were quarrels among factions of my people, breaking out again and again with increasingly vicious fury.
"Ordinary weapons were not enough. With their skill my people took the unseen things—they understood, then, a way to see them—and made them change their natures to become more deadly still."