My God, the thing is telepathic!… “You’re telepathic!” he murmured, hardly daring to believe it could be true.

Thought: What does he mean? What do you bring to me, strangely formed one? What is it that you say to me and that I hear as a Reading of the Essence? How do you speak? Are you from the Lord of the Heaven?

Lad-nar’s thick, leathery lips had not moved. The fanged mouth had not even twisted in speech. But to Kettridge it seemed that there must be a third being in the cave. A speaker who roared in his mind, in a voice sharp and alert.

Thought: There is no one else here. This is the Place of Fasting. Lad-nar has cleansed it of all previous Fasting Ones. You do not answer. There is fear blended into your Essence, as it has always been with the cat litters. Yet you are not one with them. Speak! Are you an omen ?

Kettridge’s lips began to tremble. He stared up in awe at the startlingly bright, double-lidded eyes, suddenly realizing that the creature was more than telepathic. It was two-way receptive. It could not only direct thoughts into Kettridge’s mind. It could just as easily pluck the ideas from his reeling brain.

“I—I am from earth,” whispered Kettridge, sliding up against the warm stone wall _of the cave.

Thought: The Heaven Home! I might have known. The Lord of the Heaven has sent you to me as many feastings.

In the space of a few short seconds, as Lad-nar spoke deep in his mind, Kettridge received a complete mental picture of the being’s incredible life. He had known there were living creatures on Blestone—many animal oddities in a barbaric hiding state. But the preliminary survey had not prepared him for any life of so complex a nature. Obviously Lad-nar’s race was dying off.

Kettridge tried to blank out his thoughts but was terrifyingly unsuccessful.