"But how?"
Psychband gave an electro-magnetic rumble, the equivalent of a shrug. "Out of my field," he said. "No prior indoctrination."
Ixmal sensed a momentary fright. The alien could move matter just as Man had moved matter. The factor of controlled mobility ... directed mobility. Clearly Zale-3 was no ordinary god. He'd have to speed his efforts. Time was running out. Already the earth pattern had changed since his first contact with the alien.
Ixmal concentrated.
The earth rotated, revolved, changed. In a long-forgotten memory cell he found a clue—Man once had frustrated the laws of probability in the throws of dice. He devoured the hidden knowledge. Although little enough to go on, he detected a basic principle.
In somewhat over half a million years he was able to sway flowers, move leaves against the wind, make small shrubs tremble. In less than half that time again he felled a huge tree and wrested ores from the earth. (An age of vulcanism had come and gone; the Atlantic coast was an igneous shelf, reptiles towered above the earth.) In another half million years he possessed the machines, raw materials and robot workers he needed. (The latter were designed to perform purely mechanical tasks, menial things he couldn't be bothered with. He had much to do. And ages were passing.) He saved time by enclosing his work area in a force field to protect the delicate machinery against the elements. In that respect he had bested the alien.
