The engineer threw himself back in his seat.  “I’m with you,” said he, laying aside his argument.  The rest followed his example, and presently were looking upon Sanus again.

All told, this particular session covered a good many hours.  The four kept up a more or less connected mental conversation with each other as they went along, except, of course, when the events became too exciting.  Mainly they were trying to catch their agents in the proper mood for receiving telepathic communications, and it proved no easy matter.  It required a state of semi-consciousness, a condition of being neither awake nor asleep.  It was necessary to wait until night had fallen on that particular part of the planet. [Footnote:  It should be mentioned that the parts of Sanus showed the same condition of bee supremacy and human servitude.  The spot in question was quite typical of the colonies.]

Van Emmon was the first to get results.  Corrus had driven his herd back from the brook at which they had got their evening drink, and after seeing them all quietly settled for the night, he lay down on the dried grass slope of a small hill, and stared up at the sky.  Van Emmon had plenty of time to study the stars as seen from Sanus, and certainly the case demanded plenty of time.

For he saw a broad band of sky, as broad as the widest part of the Milky Way, which was neither black nor sparkling with stars, but glowing as brightly as the full moon!  From the eastern horizon to the zenith it stretched, a great “Silvery Way,” as Van Emmon labeled it; and as the darkness deepened and the night lengthened, the illumination crept on until the band of light stretched all the way across.  Van Emmon racked his brains to account for the thing.

Then Corrus became drowsy.  Van Emmon concentrated with all his might.  At first he overdid the thing; Corrus was not quite drowsy enough, and the attempt only made him wakeful.  Shortly, however, he became exceedingly sleepy, and the geologist’s chance came.

At the end of a few minutes the herdsman sat up, blinking.  He looked around at the dark forms of the cattle, then up at the stars; he was plainly both puzzled and excited.  He remained awake for hours, in fact, thinking over the strange thing he had seen “in a dream.”

Meanwhile Smith was having a similar experience with Dulnop.  The young fellow was, like Corrus, alone at the time; and he, too, was made very excited and restless by what he saw.

Billie was unable to work upon her bee.  Supreme retired to a hive just before dusk, but remained wide awake and more or less active, feeding voraciously, for hours upon hours.  When she finally did nap, she fell asleep on such short notice that the architect was taken off her guard.  The bee seemed to all but jump into slumberland.

The doctor also had to wait for Rolla.  The woman sat for a long time in the growing dusk, looming out pensively over the valley.  Corrus was somewhere within a mile or two, and so Kinney was not surprised to see the herdsman’s image dancing, tantalizingly, before Rolla’s eyes.  She was thinking of him with all her might.