the spaceship could not maintain altitude against the 
gravitational forces of the Moon. 
   Eagle Three fell. 

                         *

"That was a major error, Kelemar F", said Halamon B 
harshly. "why did you activate the suction field?" 
   Kelemar F had a conscious stricken face as he 
looked up at the wildly gyrating terrestrial spaceship. 
   "You have me all wrong, Halamon B", he answered. 
"A pure reflex. I saw how the missile spat fire. . ."
   "Retro rockets!" 
   "Yes, I know that now. But in the first instant. . . I 
thought they wanted to attack us. Finally we know their 
thoughts after thousands of their years. And it is not a 
simple thing to understand, on the first try, a species 
which previously moved itself only on the back of 
onagern, elephants and horses, but which now has 
control of space flight."
   "We have slept for a long time", threw in Dagarel E. 
"Perhaps long enough. The Earth people have made 
enormous progress during the last ten Argos, more 
progress than in the whole two hundred Argos before 
that." 
   "Perhaps we should have counted on that", pondered 
Halamon B. "as we withdrew ourselves the last time to 
the Moon, we had already noticed their development. 
They possessed rail-mounted vehicles, telephone 
transmission, explosives. . . And now they obviously 
blew out, without our noticing it, the Moon from its orbit 
around the Earth and went thereby on an interstellar 
journey." 
   Dagarel E sighed. "If I am to be completely honest, I 
don't even regret this development of things. Our

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