And Pud began shaping a psychokinetic bolt in his prime brain. For this purpose he marshaled the resources of all his other brains as well, and every head except his prime one assumed an idiot stare.
He said, "Now!" and loosed the bolt as a tight-beam, aimed at the ship and invested with ninety-two separate and carefully calculated phase-motions.
The ship froze, fifty miles over their heads. The flicker from its rocket tubes became a steady, motionless glow.
Pud said, "Now," again, and altered a number of the phase-motions once, twice, three times, in an intricate pattern.
The ship vanished.
As one, the many heads of the Vegan Scientists turned to stare at the point in the sky where they had first sighted the ship.
There it was, coasting past the laboratory-planet, tubes lifeless; coasting on the velocity that had brought it from the last star it had visited.
There it was, just as it had been before the tiny aliens had sighted the flickerings that had caused them to relax their meteor-screens.
There it was, sent back in time to before all the day's frantic happenings had happened.