Sick dread was on Gene's face. "Kac," he whispered, "What was the name of this world that was stolen from you?"
"Ours was the third world nearest the sun," the tall warrior answered with true regret. "The planet you call Earth...."
Gene's torment of mind knew no bounds in the following hours. Kac had left him in the cavern, warning him not to destroy the Talkers or the tribe would surely slay him. The biologist had given his word and even if he had wished, he could not have violated it; for nothing short of an atomic-cannon could rend the metal of which the titanic machines were built.
He had an atomic-cannon mounted on his ship, New Frontiers, but what good was it? He could not get to it—the Beast People surrounded the valley and would nail him the moment he appeared over the rim.
A small platform extended from the ego-transposer, midway up, and to this he climbed via a ladder depending from it. A bucket seat was anchored to the flooring. He dropped in it and began studying the instruments before him.
Outside of two silver-beaded screens, the fixtures were simple ones and quite easy to understand. Yet, his manipulations brought no results.
Long after night fell, he worked with the machine, and when done, he left with the knowledge that he was its master. The troublemaker turned out to be a broken wire; simple, yet it had stumped the Wronged Ones. The plainest things are often the hardest to see.
The other machine defied solution. Kac had told him that it, too, had been captured from the Beast People, who avowed that it generated rays beneficial to vegetable and animal life.
Gene learned definitely, though, that it was the cause of Earth's plight. The working of it was beyond him, but this much he knew. This, then, was the traitorous Beast People's way of exacting vengeance—by deliberately misinforming their captors as to the machine's purpose. Too, they had tampered with some vital part, making it impossible to shut off the power.
There was no guessing how long it had been sending that deadly ray through space, slowly disintegrating all metallic matter in its path. In a few years, maybe months, metal molecules would be drawn so far apart that every structure on Earth would collapse under its own weight.