Suddenly, Malhomme laughed, a dry laugh which almost rasped in his throat.  “Lee Rynason, I have called men to God for so long that I almost began to believe it myself.  And when the men started talking about the god of these aliens....”  He shook his head, the spent laughter still drawing his mouth back into a grin.  “Well, I’m glad it isn’t true.  Religion wouldn’t be worth a damn if it were true.”

“How did the men find out about Kor?” Rynason asked.

Malhomme spread his hands.  “Manning has been talking, as usual.  He ridicules the Hirlaji, and their god.  And at the same time he says they are a menace.”

“Why?  Is he still trying to work the townsmen up against them?”

“Of course.  Manning wants all the power he can get.  If it means sacrificing the Hirlaji, he’ll do it.”  Malhomme stood up, stretching himself.  “He says they may be the Outsiders, and he’s stirring up all the fear he can.  He’ll grab any excuse, no matter how impossible.”

“It’s not so impossible,” Rynason said.  “Kor is an Outsiders machine.”

Malhomme stared at him.  “You’re sure of that?”

He nodded.  “There’s no doubt of it—­I saw it from three feet away.”  He told Malhomme of his linkage with Horng, the contact with the memories, the mind, Tebron, and of the interview with the machine that was Kor.  Malhomme listened with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side, occasionally throwing in a comment or a question.

As he finished, Rynason said, “That race that Kor warned them about sounds remarkably like us.  A warlike race that would crush them if they left the planet.  We haven’t found any other intelligent life ... just the Hirlaji, and us.”

“And the Outsiders,” said Malhomme.

“No.  This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about the same level as the Hirlaji themselves.  Remember, the Outsiders had already spread through a thousand star-systems long before this.  No, we’re the race they were warned against.”

“What about the weapons?” Malhomme said.  “Disintegrators.  We haven’t got anything that powerful that a man can carry in his hand.  And yet the Hirlaji had them thousands of years ago.”

“Yes, but for some reason they couldn’t duplicate them.  It doesn’t make sense:  those weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of the Hirlaji, but they had them.”

“Perhaps your aliens were the Outsiders,” Malhomme said.  “Perhaps we see around us the remnants of a great race fallen.”

Rynason shook his head.

“But they must have had some contact with the Outsiders,” Mara said.  “Sometime even before Tebron’s lifetime.  The Outsiders could have left the disintegrators, and the machine that they thought was a god....”

“That’s just speculation,” Rynason said.  “Tebron himself didn’t really know where they’d come from; they’d been passed down through the priesthood for a long time, and within the priesthood they did have some secrets.  I suppose if I could search the race-memory long enough I might find another nice big block there hiding that secret.  But it’s difficult.”