iful eye which looked down upon a fanciful earth and lo, there were lances of fire reaching upward. It all happened with a swiftness which stunned me and left me in awe. There were so many things to see. Eyes showed my valley as if I were flying over it and the valley was falling away, and one eye which caught my notice showed a white streak in the sky, and I shouted, for there was a killbird of the type I knew, and it came with the speed of an evil thought, and other eyes showed the white streak, which became a gleaming and fatal killbird closing on one of the killbirds which I'd been watching, and they came together and there was a flash of fire and, oh, there was so much to watch. I could not see it all. I had views of my valley falling away, views of a sky which soon began to go black, and I could see on some eyes the huge array of killbirds climbing on lances of fire straight up and the action was so swift that my head was jerking from side to side as I tried to take it all in, tried to see all the eyes at once. What was the message? It came to me in a flash. God had heard Eban the Hunter and, although he had chosen to punish his servant by taking away the woman he loved most, was now rewarding his servant with a gift. God would not give man wings unless he intended man to use them! God was sending his giant killbirds to destroy the gods of man, the sleek and small killbirds who lurked in the clean skies lying in wait to blast man on his wings. «Thank you, thank you,» I prayed, still watching. «Would it be too much to ask you, to beg you, God of all, to pull the teeth of all the dragons?» I could not then count the vast number of huge killbirds which went aloft to do battle with the gods of man. I estimated sixty, seventy. The battle was a great one, God's killbirds smashing and destroying each other there high in the skies, and although I knew that it was not real, that it was a fanciful creation for my benefit on the eyes of the game thing, there was a feeling of joy in me, for it was God's way of telling me that now the skies, as the earth, were man's to enjoy. I longed to leave, to join my family and to tell Yorerie and Cree to start building wings. We would fly! Oh, how we would soar and not fear the swift and deadly dart of a killbird, for God was destroying them. So many died at the meeting with God's giant killer killbirds that there could be none left to harass man in his feeble attempts to fly. And now the view on the eyes was of a great blackness and a few stars and a funny ball below with mantles of stuff which seemed somewhat like clouds and a vast blueness. Another sign from God. He was showing me an image of the field of endless waters which his spirit warnings had prevented me from seeing during our travels in the far east. Of course it was not the real thing, for it was so far below and so tiny and curved on that funny ball. Things remained the same for a period, and I stayed with my eyes on the many eyes. Then the views started to change and the ball below began to fill the eyes until the field of endless waters was lost from view and there were, below, mountains and plains, and they came toward me on the eyes, and then I looked at the eye which, throughout it all, had remained static and saw streaks moving downward, as if seeing the flight of killbirds from out in the heavens where God lives. And other eyes showed the killbirds as their noses grew red with anger and then split and out came dozens of little killbirds which left little tails of white as they flew. Had I been wrong? God's giants were giving birth to little killbirds? Had his message been misunderstood? But no. God gave me still another sign. The small killbirds flew down, down, and then the fanciful land shown on the one eye which did not change bloomed with light and perfectly formed clouds swelled up from the earth in a blossoming of such beauty that my eyes stung with it and I wept tears of joy as I saw God's sign that all was well. He was creating chaos, which He loves, to show me that I had understood His message. And then I watched as one by one the eyes went blank, leaving only the unchanging eye which showed the clouds climbing, climbing, and then God spoke to me. His voice was deep, and sometimes I could not be sure I was understanding, for a mere man is not expected to, nor can he hope to understand everything God says. Afterward, I tried to use what I had learned in the read game to record the words of God in the symbols, but I was unsure, and so I depend mostly on memory. God said something like this. «Now it is truly ended,» God said. Ah, I thought, I was right. «Now we have won.» God and I, fighting the killbirds? «Your presence here, man, your ability to follow instructions, shows that we have won, but your actions now have assured it. If you survived, some of them could have survived, and now your actions, well done, have made it possible to strike the final blow. Now the earth is yours, man. Now you must go forth, leave this place, for it has served its purpose. Go forth and populate the earth and tell your children of this time when you struck the final blow which gave victory, for if they did survive, they cannot come back, not in ten thousand years, from this final and devastating blow. And now, from the past, I wish you well, man. Remember us, your ancestors, and do not repeat our mistakes.» I waited. There was nothing more. I puzzled. God was my ancestor? I didn't know. I knew only that God had spoken and had left us one fine gift, the gift of the skies. I watched and the final eye went dead and the game things went to sleep and I left the room. The plate closed behind me, never to open again. I went into the valley to find my family still in mourning, but there was an air of excitement, and, indeed, great fear. They ran to me. «Killbirds, killbirds,» Yorerie yelled. «By the countless numbers.» It took me a long time to calm them down. And as they told me their stories I began to realize that it had not all been a creation of the eyes, but that God had actually come to earth and moved and that the death of the killbirds was not fanciful but real. «I was walking,» said Roden, pairmate of Cree, «with my children and the ground suddenly shook beneath my feet. Trees began to lean, and I ran. I looked back and the trees fell and the earth opened in a giant mouth.» It was no lie. We found the hole, and it was huge, lined with dragonskin, empty. There were, as we counted over the days which followed, an even one hundred of those holes, spread around our valley. (As time went on the rains and snows filled the killbird holes with water and they made fine swimming places for our young, although we discouraged it, since the water therein was so frightfully deep.) «And then,» Roden said, «there was a roar as of endless summer thunder, and as I feared for my life a giant killbird rose on a tail of fire, and I looked around—» «They came from everywhere,» Cree the Kite said excitedly, «so many we could not count, and the air was filled with their thunder, and—» «I was so close,» said Ouree, «that I could feel the heat of the tail of fire, and the force of his passing upward sent me sprawling to the ground.» «Thank God you were not hurt,» I said. «The air was filled with them,» Yorerie said. «As many as the birds of the end of the summer, flying upward, and then the gods of man came and did battle with them and sent many of them from the sky.» (Pieces of dragonskin fell into the village of Stoneskull, but hurt no one, giving Stoneskull's people material for many arrow heads and hardaxes.) And so I listened to my family. All had seen and heard. It was a real thing. One hundred killbirds had risen from our valley to do battle with the gods of man. I was right. So many could not help but destroy all, and my knowledge of such things made me believe that killbirds, like dragons, did not breed, so that now the sky must be empty. «My family,» I said. «I have heard the voice of God. He has told me, Eban the Hunter, that the earth is ours and that the sky is ours, for His purpose in this wondrous thing was to kill the killbirds so that man can forever and in safety praise God with the wings which God gave him.» «Can it be true?» Yorerie, who once risked his life with no hope of gain merely to be able to make a long soar, was looking at the sky with a rapt expression. «God has spoken to me,» I said. «Although I still mourn, I will come out of mourning and we will build wings and we will praise Him with a flight…» I looked around and chose the highest hill. «… from that peak to the center of the valley.» «Ha, Eban,» Yorerie yelled in joy. We built in haste, but with care, for wings are not thrown together lightly. A support breaks in midair and a man tumbles to his death. We had an ample store of dragon's veins for tying, and the women worked to scrape the hides to a thinness, and at last they were ready. Then we three hunters, last of the Strabo family, climbed the hill, careful to stay inside the teeth-spitting range of the hill dragons, and cleared a place, making God's chaos in praise. On the morning we lifted after a run and we soared. Our valley made a nice cup for the creation of updrafts, and we went high, I confident yet keeping an eye on the sky to see the first hint of the white streak of a killbird. None came. «Ha, Eban,» Yorerie yelled in joy, swooping past me on a wing. I dived after him, chased him, yelled my joy. Cree came and zoomed past my head and I found an updraft and climbed and forgot that there ever had been such a thing as a killbird. We flew until the updrafts failed, and we landed, one after the other, on the meadow beside the stream to greet our family, who sang in joy. Nothing would do Yorerie but to make a second flight, so we trudged to the hill and ran and soared. There were, needless to say, many flights of praise in the following time, and then a strange thing happened. It was during the period when there was in the very air a strange tingle, a warning, the spirits talking to our bare bellies. It gave me some concern, but it was not strong, not deadly. Still, I knew not why there was warning in land which had always been safe until, consulting the Seer of Things Unseen, I was told that in our legends the old ones spoke of a time when the spirits of evil moved in the air. I doubted God, then. Had He given us one boon only to curse us in the giving? But in days the spirit was so low that one had to concentrate to feel it, and then it faded, and during that time we had no rain. But while our attentions were on the spirits in the air and we were troubled, Ouree the Unclaimed built a pair of wings, copying them from ours, and announced her intentions of flying. «Women do not fly,» I said. «I have consulted the Seer,» Ouree said. She could be the most stubborn woman upon occasion, as I had found, since she tended my daughter, Margan, and the child I had fathered with her, whom she had named Mar. «There is nothing in our custom which says a woman cannot fly.» «But women have never flown,» I said. «We will consult the Seer,» she said, with tight lips. «Women are not strong enough to fight the winds of the sky,» I said. «I am strong enough to carry a deer,» she said. «Can you say more?» Well, a wise family head, indeed, a wise man, knows when he has no argument. I yielded and, to prevent the breaking of frail female bones, gave Ouree flight lessons, sitting on her desire to leap from the high hill and forcing her to take short and quickly ended glides from low places. She did well, damaging her wings on landing only once. The day came when nothing would do but for Ouree to fly from a high hill, though not the highest. I talked with her at length, warning her of the updrafts and the winds and giving her lessons in how to handle them, and then, white-faced, she ran and leaped and soared beautifully, her bare legs gleaming and her graceful form hanging below the wings in the saddle, and I heard her cry out in joy as she caught the updraft and circled. «Do not climb high,» I yelled at her. «Glide slowly toward the meadow.» «Beautiful,» she yelled. «So beautiful.» And she climbed, the silly female. She went into the air and got the wind off the far hills. «Dive, dive,» I yelled at her. She was being swept slowly toward the rim of hills to the west. «Dive down and get below the hills!» But she was beyond the reach of my voice. I could see the people in the meadow below, and they were waving and shouting and I was shouting, and Ouree was still being swept toward the far rim. She was high. I watched. «All right,» I said, speaking as if she could hear me. «You have gone too far and now you cannot come back into the valley. Stay high, clear the hills. Above all, do not go down within range of the teeth of the dragons. Fly beyond the hills, find a meadow, land, and then fold your wings and walk back, coming all the way around.» Surely, surely, she was wise enough to know her danger. Surely. But she was now realizing her position and was trying to dive back. She was diving for the top of the hill where the dragons were rooted. Then, as I screamed and yelled, unseen and unheard, she came to her senses, soared and disappeared beyond the hills. I made haste down the hill and found the family concerned. «Yorerie,» I said, «you and I. We will go through the dragon's hole and march to meet her. Since we know not where she landed, nor if she will circle to the south or the north, one will go to the south and the other to the north, and we will meet her.» «How will I know when to turn back if I do not meet her?» Yorerie asked. «I have been thinking of extending our range,» I said. «It will be good if you scout all the way around the southern hills to a point directly to the west and then return by another route.» «Yes. You will do the same to the north?» «I will,» I said. «We take note of game signs, of water, of living sites, of fruit and nut trees.» «I will,» Yorerie said. We made preparation. I was worried about Ouree, but she was a solid-minded woman, skilled in the hunt, could be expected to be able to forage on the land for the few days it would take her to walk back around the hills. My only worry was that the land to the north and west had not been explored and there could be more dragons. I thought of Ouree facing a dragon alone, and I was sick inside. Mar had loved her so. She was so gentle and so considerate, and she looked after our children, Margan and Mar, so well. But she would be fine, I told myself. Old Seer would tend the two little girls. I would find Ouree in the wilderness and bring her back. Mar would have wanted that. And thinking of Mar I felt a little surge inside me. Woman. My Mar. Mar, Mar, I said silently, can you understand why I fear so for the safety of Ouree? It is only because you loved her so, my Mar. And as I set out beside the sturdy and dependable Yorerie to fetch back the young woman we'd both loved during the time she lived in the warm cave with us, I could see Mar's face smiling at me with a knowing look in her eyes. Behind us the family waved. Then we were alone, and I heard or felt something, something I'd never heard or felt before, and, fearfully, I looked up. Ref: Z-333-469-123-P-222 X&A Restriction Code Origin: Minutes Board of Determination, Sector Lightning, Headquarters X&A, Mercer. Sub.: III Planet, Life Zone Class Xanthos II sun, sector Sub-Lightning 30-60-97-38. Inhabited Humanoid. Dated: N.Y. 30,500, Month 4, day 24 Pres.: Prof. Anton Bradley Gore. The meeting was called to order by Chairman Prof. Anton Bradley Gore. Prof. Gore announced that the purpose of the Board of Determination was to discuss the discovery of Class 1-A-sub Humanoids, C-Scale primitive, T rating T-1. The purpose of the meeting thus established, the Chairman distributed copies of a report from U.P.X. Old Earth, Capt. T. Willis, Cmmd. A recess was called to allow the board to study the report. Upon reconvening, Chairman Gore called for introductions by the individual board members. The makeup of the board is as follows: Chairman Gore: Some of you may question my being chosen as chairman. If you do, I can't blame you, for this is pretty high terrain for a teacher of literature at Xanthos University. I suppose I was selected since I was called upon, because of my specialty in alien literature, to analyze the hypnoprobe material gathered by members of the crew of the Old Earth. Since I taught the subject, I suppose they decided to use me. You know how those X&A fellows are about aliens. But since my duty is just to preside, I guess I'm as good as anyone, and I won't let any of my uneducated ideas intrude into your thinking. Now if you will stand, beginning w