sounding sphere. It was of design, not chance, and it contained
the speech and wisdom of the stars.

What engines and elements and mastered forces, what lore and
mysteries and destiny-controls, might be there! Undoubtedly, since
so much could be enclosed in so little a thing as the foundation
stone of a public building, this enormous sphere should contain
vast histories, profounds of research achieved beyond man's wildest
guesses, laws and formulae that, easily mastered, would make man's
life on earth, individual and collective, spring up from its
present mire to inconceivable heights of purity and power. It was
Time's greatest gift to blindfold, insatiable, and sky-aspiring
man. And to him, Bassett, had been vouchsafed the lordly fortune
to be the first to receive this message from man's interstellar
kin!

No white man, much less no outland man of the other bush-tribes,
had gazed upon the Red One and lived. Such the law expounded by
Ngurn to Bassett. There was such a thing as blood brotherhood.
Bassett, in return, had often argued in the past. But Ngurn had
stated solemnly no. Even the blood brotherhood was outside the
favour of the Red One. Only a man born within the tribe could look
upon the Red One and live. But now, his guilty secret known only
to Balatta, whose fear of immolation before the Red One fast-sealed
her lips, the situation was different. What he had to do was to
recover from the abominable fevers that weakened him, and gain to
civilization. Then would he lead an expedition back, and, although
the entire population of Guadalcanal he destroyed, extract from the
heart of the Red One the message of the world from other worlds.