"Had they left the control closed their world would have drawn in those ships to smash in annihilation against it, but just after the helpless ships were drawn into their world's atmosphere the control was opened and the magnetic grip released. Then while the swarms of ships, helpless in the darkness, were in their atmosphere, their own ships they had constructed in small numbers and which they could operate in space by means of reflected electrical-sound vibrations instead of sight-in these ships they went up and boarded and captured the helpless vessels.
"They brought them down to this world's surface, those inside them helpless in the darkness against these people of darkness. Almost all inside the captured ships they slew with the pain-producers, but a few who they thought would be useful to them they saved and prisoned as I was prisoned in the building of the rulers.
"Soon afterward they repeated this process, closing the control and drawing in new swarms of ships from outside the cloud. And again they did the same thing and with the same result. The fourth time they captured but one ship, your own, but this can have made no difference to them, for their first three operations had brought them in thousands of great interstellar ships in which all the eyeless hordes could be contained.
"Already they had almost completed the refitting of these ships, fitting them with their vibration-guiding devices, and also with the mechanisms they will take with them for their conquest of the galaxy. These are mechanisms each of which can destroy all light for a vast space around it by neutralizing the light-vibrations even as is done by natural forces here in the cloud.
"And with these they will conquer the galaxy inevitably. For they need but settle upon a world and with their mechanisms or one of them destroy all light in and around it. Plunged in absolute darkness, its blind peoples will be unable to strike back at the eyeless creatures who, used to darkness and at home in it, can wipe out the others at their leisure with the pain-producers.
"Already their last preparations are being finished, already their hordes streaming toward the waiting masses of interstellar ships. It was that knowledge that made me desperate, and in desperation I managed to escape from the building of the rulers that was my prison. I have kept always with me the ultra-violet sight-glasses, and with a pair of them was able to elude the creatures, hoping to steal a cruiser and get out to the galaxy to warn it. But I could not get near any of the ships, and in going through the city in a vain hope of doing so I saw you battling with and killing that creature and came to you."
* * *
When Zat Zanat had finished his strange tale, I was silent for a moment, gazing out into the narrow violet-lit street beside which we crouched.
"You think then that the only hope is to steal a cruiser and get out of the cloud to warn the galaxy before the attack comes?" I asked.
He nodded quickly. "What other hope is there? Nothing can halt this invasion of theirs, for before an hour more is past, it may well be, their hordes will be pouring out of the cloud in their cruisers. You can hear them making ready now."