outer world of mammals. Some of the Galus produce cos-ata-lu
and cos-ata-lo both; the Weiroos only cos-ata-lu--in
other words all Wieroos are born male, and so they prey upon the
Galus for their women and sometimes capture and torture the Galu
men who are cos-ata-lu in an endeavor to learn the secret
which they believe will give them unlimited power over all other
denizens of Caspak.

No Wieroos come up from the beginning--all are born of the Wieroo
fathers and Galu mothers who are cos-ata-lo, and there are
very few of the latter owing to the long and precarious stages
of development. Seven generations of the same ancestor must come
up from the beginning before a cos-ata-lu child may be born;
and when one considers the frightful dangers that surround the
vital spark from the moment it leaves the warm pool where it has
been deposited to float down to the sea amid the voracious creatures
that swarm the surface and the deeps and the almost equally
unthinkable trials of its effort to survive after it once becomes
a land animal and starts northward through the horrors of the
Caspakian jungles and forests, it is plainly a wonder that even
a single babe has ever been born to a Galu woman.

Seven cycles it requires before the seventh Galu can complete the
seventh danger-infested circle since its first Galu ancestor
achieved the state of Galu. For ages before, the ancestors of
this first Galu may have developed from a Band-lu or Bo-lu egg
without ever once completing the whole circle--that is from a
Galu egg, back to a fully developed Galu.

Bradley's head was whirling before he even commenced to grasp the