In the opened doorway stood a tall man, with icy blue eyes and short brown hair. His face was covered with a neat beard but still it was apparent that he had recently been injured. His cheek was swollen and purple. He looked strong and able and he was garbed in a style of clothing that we could recognise from the bodies we had found. I concluded at this point that this was another native to this island.

In his hands was a long stick and he held it in front of him to ward himself from us. He looked frightened and angry at our presence and did not speak but backed away from us.

"Have no fear, sir. We are explorers. We mean no harm." I said. I had not forseen this eventuality and felt quite unprepared for a human encounter. According to my reasoning, the paraverse should be rather void of human life,

Charlotte held her empty hands toward the man and I understood what she was trying to do. My hands, however, were occupied with holding my gun, which had slipped out of my pocket as the door opened. I replaced the gun in my pocket, assured that the native would have no idea what the item was, it was highly unlikely that he had ever seen one. But the man stared in a frantic fashion at the pocket in which I had deposited the weapon.

"We mean you no harm!" I repeated, trying to sound calm and resolute but I could see on our encounter's face that the situation was quickly deteriorating. The man would most likely run away or attack any second and I was not sure which.

Then Charlotte intervened. She stepped forward and went down on one knee, bending her head in deference. When she moved the man rose the stick over his head, clearly intending to use it on my dear friends beautiful head, but the blow never came. Instead, the man lowered it to the ground and mimicked the woman's peace-offer. I stayed back. The both of them started talking in a low voice and to my surprise and wonder, the strange man spoke perfect english.

Of what I could make out of their conversation, the man called himself Edo and had been born on this island. He was afraid of us because people like us had arrived only yesterday. After a short period of aggressive behaviour and asking all manner of questions that Edo and his friends, some of whom we had found outside, did not understand, they had started killing people. Edo had escaped only by locking himself into a stone chamber deep inside the Celestial Menage, which was the name of the building we were all inside.

Telling this story, did nothing for the man's mental stability and he wept and swore intermittently as it progressed. He told of the fiends that had arrived. One of them was some sort of gang leader. He had worn a red dress with golden buttons, black trousers and a silly black hat. I recognised the description as some uniform, possibly Brittish. The military man had brought with him four tough men, armed with weapons of the kind that I had, but bigger. Edo was of course referring to guns. It was staggering to hear the man describe a party of adventurers, or rather from their behvaiour: thugs, that were so obviously from Earth. Most likely, the men were even from the Commonwealth, for they too had spoken English. Edo explained that he was very proficient in learning languages and that he had heard the men speaking for quite a while. Though every now and then Charlotte and I had to help him with some word he had not used before.

All the while he was telling this, he was always speaking to and looking at Charlotte. He was apparently still weary of me and the weapon I kept in my pocket. I dared not, however, put it away since I still did not fully trust this fellow. After all, we had just met him, and found several people dead in his vicinity.

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