"Man!" exclaimed the one with the close-cropped red hair. "If we can find out why not, maybe we can stop it wherever it still pops up in the galaxy!"
It was late afternoon when Yorgh ambled back into camp.
A great sigh went up from the waiting groups when they saw that he was smiling.
"They are men!" he shouted. "Sons of the Old Ones—as are we! Tefior, Jayn, when I have told you, this will be a night for a feast!"
He told them of the strange men who said they came from the Terran Colonial Patrol in answer to a message from The World, which had long been shunned as a dead colony, dead of a plague still known among the stars.
He told how the Terrans had taken blood from his arm and looked at it in a queer machine, whereupon they had grown talkative and excited.
"They said they will send people to teach us the forgotten ways of the Old Ones, because we are the first they have found who do not die of the sickness," he concluded. "Just for bringing them kromps and other animals to help cure the sickness, they will see that we have all we need to stand beside them, as brothers."
And he told how one of the Terrans had knocked a kromp unconscious with a small machine in his hand, to get some of its blood.
"I will show you," he grinned, thinking of a tremendous joke. "Where is Moyt?"
The others pushed the tall, blond Moyt forward.