 Why is the supervising council worried about the Old Ones?
Whatever it was, he had no business in it; for five minutes before he had been spaceborne, on the Long Jump from Earth to the thriving colonies circling Betelgeuse Nine. How to explain a set of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? They were not metal or plaster or knotty pine; they were not papered, painted or overlaid with stucco. They might be ventilators, he thought; but if so the air they brought in was worse than what he already had. Someone was watching Herrell McCray, with the clinical fascination of a biochemist observing the wigglings of paramecia in a new antibiotic—and with the prayerful emotions of a starving, shipwrecked, sailor, watching the inward bobbing drift of a wave-born cask that may contain food. Indeed, they worked as well a yard or a quarter-mile away as they did when, rarely, they rested in the crevices they had been formed from in his "skin." His members, disposed about the room where he had sent them on various errands, quivered and shook a little; yet they were the calmest limbs in the room; the members of the other team workers were in a state of violent commotion. "Paranormal powers," muttered Hatcher's second in command, and the others mumbled agreement. The staff is preparing a technical description of the forces now, but I can say that they are electromagnetic vibrations modulating a carrier wave of very high speed, and in turn modulated by the vibrations of the atmosphere caused by the subject's own breathing." Hatcher swung closer, his thick skin quivering slightly; he would have gestured if he had brought members with him to gesture with. The Central Masses team has just turned in a most alarming report." The council room was like a tableau in a museum until the councillor spoke again, each council member poised over his locus-point, his members drifting about him. If the Old Ones have seized one of our probers our time margin is considerably narrowed. "—is no greater," said the councillor, "than the danger to every one of us if we do not find allies now ." It was just like the council to put the screws on; they had a reputation for demanding results at any cost—even at the cost of destroying the only thing you had that would make results possible. Not even Hatcher had quite got over the revolting physical differences between the Earthman and his own people.
 The Old Ones have captured one of their probers.
 The Old Ones have captured one of their probers.  The Old Ones are not happy with the kind of science Hatcher is conducting.  The Old Ones need Hatcher’s data on the human specimen.  The Old Ones must be given a human tribute soon.