Just now Dalen hesitated, not because he was afraid, but from caution stirred by his knowledge of Mogar’s ancient shrewdness. Mogar mistook his hesitation for weakness, and his next thought rolled powerfully and triumphantly from the Magellanic Galaxy, across the intervening vacuum, back to the IX and through its length to Bootes again:

“Then, perhaps, you will challenge me.”

Dalen perceived the note of condescension. He knew that Mogar had challenged many ambitious young gods, and had never lost a test, but still Dalen did not rise to the taunt.

“No, sire, I am not at this time going to challenge you,” Dalen answered evenly.

Mogar’s guffaw thundered across the intergalactic void.

But Dalen had not been elected to the council from the committeeship of the Constellation Hercules for his caution. At once he reached out to the other galaxy with his sensitive perceptory faculties and probed lightly at Mogar’s mind.

Dalen recently had begun to suspect that the elder god had retained some of the lower mind-centers that were distinctly ungodlike. Now was a chance to find out. But almost as soon as Dalen tried, he was chagrined. He touched one of the intricately convoluted hyper-centers, but it was shielded.

That was embarrassing. Mogar would know that he had tried, and by evening every god on the council would know that the newcomer from the LIII Constellation Committee had tried to probe old Mogar’s mind and had failed. But Dalen was not a god to back away from his chosen course.

He felt that his power was somewhat diminished by the unusual distance, for Mogar was visiting outside his own galaxy today. Dalen