of the plates for a while, until you hear what Para has to
say; that’s a part of the knowledge Lavons must have as they
come into their office, and it comes before the plates. I can
give you some hints of what we are. First Para has to tell you
something about what we aren’t.”
Lavon nodded, willingly enough, and watched the Proto as
it settled gently to the surface of the hewn table at which Shar
had been sitting. There was in the entity such a perfection and
economy of organization, such a grace and surety of move-
ment, that he could hardly believe m his own new-won ma-
turity. Para, like all the Protos, made him feel, not perhaps
poorly thought-out, but at least unfinished.
“We know that in this universe there is logically no place
for man,” the gleaming, now immobile cylinder upon the
table droned abruptly. “Our memory is the common property
of all our races. It reaches back to a time when there were no
such creatures as man here, nor any even remotely like men.
It remembers also that once upon a day there were men here,
suddenly, and in some numbers. Their spores littered the Bot-
tom; we found the spores only a short time after our season’s
Awakening, and inside them we saw the forms of men, slum-
bering.
“Then men shattered their spores and emerged. At first they
seemed helpless, and the Eaters devoured them by scores, as in
those days they devoured everything that moved. But that soon
ended. Men were intelligent, active. And they were gifted
with a trait, a character, possessed by no other creature in