channeled his energy through the fifth-dimension space-warp, which offered zero resistance, and in traversing the long parsecs of the galaxy, he gained six years in time before he reached the point in the galaxy nearest Mogar in the Cloud. There he halted and struck suddenly and with all the normal power of his faculties at the depths of Mogar’s mind.

He hit first the reflexive center, but there he met a solid wall of force, and then, because he could shift his probing lance faster than Mogar could erect shields, he stabbed at what would have been Mogar’s instinctive level. He was astounded to find that, too, protected.

Dalen had expected to find the lower centers unguarded, because it required untold trillions of macro-ergs of energy to erect a single shield, and Mogar would spend centuries replenishing that energy from atomic dissolution. But also because attempting to probe an elder god’s mind was an audacious thing, and Dalen had not expected Mogar would anticipate it.

But Mogar had, and was taking no chance. Dalen did not hesitate. He had committed himself, so he stabbed again, and this time with tremendous power. He funneled his probing force through the spiral timewarp of the sixth dimension, to give it infinitely compounded power, and with all this inconceivable kinetic momentum he stabbed repeatedly at successively lower layers of the elder’s mind, far past the instinctive and even into the inanimate⁠—but without success.

By now he was ashamed. The newcomer was now only a smart aleck. But Dalen had not finished. How the elder god at his age could endure the awful energy-drain of completely shielding himself was more than Dalen could understand. What Dalen did understand by now was that Mogar definitely would not allow anyone to penetrate his mind.

That was a shock as Dalen realized the implications. Why should a god shield his mind-centers at such a frightful cost of energy? There could be