The Temple of Embassy gleamed in ethereal beauty under the beams of Neeoorna's five moons. Its ivory pillars lifted slender fingers to the black basalt dome. About its periphery an arched court circled to the entrance where its massive metal gates were embossed with crouching griffins.
Jonathan and Adatha Za passed along the magnificently marbled corridors and entered a deep council room tiered with seats. He paused in the doorway and stared.
On saltwhite benches the representatives of a thousand worlds turned and looked at him. There were reptiles from Neeoorna, lavendar-tinted Zarathzans, blobous creatures from distant Sarboola, thought things of far galaxies, ethereal Tartulians, and queer black beasts that had the intelligence of genius. Against one wall glass enclosures held beings from planets so cold they needed artificial refrigeration to live here. Near the opposite side of the chamber, steamy glass vases held other life forms whose structure needed tremendous heat to exist.
There was a tall round rostrum of some glimmering metal raised like a throne in the center of the room. There stood Shar Bytu, towering over the assembled hundreds. There was a flash of his greenish forearm, and Jonathan stepped forward.
"Approach us, Jonathan Morgan," Shar Bytu called. "We of Neeoorna and the worlds of our universes have waited for you. You are the only Earth creature we could contact, though we tried many. Come, join us."
As he went down the aisle, Jonathan cast sidewise glances at the utterly alien beings that stood and looked at him. Here and there, though, he saw others like himself and the Zarathzans. Humans. Men with two arms and two legs. Women with lissome figures and soft red mouths. He felt a little warmer, and held his head higher, after seeing them.
He came up the steps and stood beside Shar Bytu. The reptile nodded, smiling somewhat.
"We had set great hopes on you. Earthling. Before your eyes you see creatures of bafflement and wonder tinged with a near-despair. The shadowy flames are a mystery and a menace to us. We had hoped—we had hoped strongly, that you might bring the solution to their strange deadliness. I know now they are as queer to you as to us."
"There's more than those flames that's queer to me," replied Jonathan grimly. "First on the list is how I ever managed to get here at all. Where I got all those tricky powers from—"
"That," deprecated Shar Bytu by a gesture of his six-clawed hand. "That is but a simple explanation. You will understand it when I point it out. You are merely the ultimate goal of evolution."