Bluebeard exclaimed. “You come to us from time?”Karvel bowed an acknowledgement. “From the past, Sire. From an extremely remote past.”“This is a grievous disappointment to me,” Bluebeard announced, fretfully combing his beard with his long fingernails. “I had hoped—but never mind. The historians will be pleased.”“This historian is not pleased,” the longest pinkbeard said. “He comes from a time before history began. He can tell us nothing, nothing at all. He says—” Pinkbeard glared icily at Karvel. “He says that in his time man had not yet colonized the moon.”Bluebeard combed his beard again. “So remote a time as that?”“He said colonized. And when I told him that man reached Earth from the moon, he would not believe it!”“Indeed.” Bluebeard eyed Karvel suspiciously. “You presume to deny the facts of our recorded history?”“Before man could reach Earth from the moon, he had to reach the moon from Earth,” Karvel said stubbornly. “Human history—”“Prehistory,”
