The head of the Rossem project did not speak immediately but paused as he swept his single eye across the crowded rows of benches as if gathering his thoughts. Thomas shuffled uncomfortably in his seat as the old wizard's eye fell on him and rested there for a moment, and he sensed some nearby wizards turning to look at him as well, no doubt wondering what it was about this rather ordinary junior wizard that should make him the subject of special scrutiny. Some of them knew he'd been visiting Saturn's laboratory for the past few days, of course, but they didn't know the reason for these visits. Of the valley's junior wizards, only Lirenna and Pondar's assistants knew that, and they only knew what Thomas himself had been able to tell them, which wasn't much.

     Finally, Saturn cleared his throat. "Most of the people in this room know that something unusual has been going on in this valley for the past few months. Some of you know that it's something called the Rossem project, but only a few of you know what the Rossem project is. Now the time has come to reveal the truth to everyone. Not just you, but eventually the whole world, for events are unfolding that will, we believe, eventually effect every living person, everywhere.”

     He glanced around the chamber to make sure that he had everyone's attention and nodded to himself before continuing. “I can begin by telling you that the word Rossem refers to the former province of Belthar, now an independent Kingdom. It was here that it all began, on a spring morning seven years ago when an iron meteorite fell in a farmer's field.

     "The farmer, knowing that meteoric iron is valuable to wizards, sold it to a wizard who lived close to him, who sold it in turn to another. It passed through several hands before it came to me, and it was the last of these prior owners, a chap called Nelkor Po, who discovered that the meteorite carries a magical charge. Not a normal magical charge, though. It carried a different kind of magic. Something undetectable to our normal magic sense but which has the ability to interfere with conventional magics. Nelkor Po lost a valuable wand when the meteorite's magical charge caused the wand to suffer a charge failure and explode. Luckily, the man himself wasn't injured, but the incident intrigued him sufficiently to send it to me for further investigation, as he knew of my fondness for such things.”

     A couple of hushed conversations had begun at the back of the chamber. Some of the mundanes, growing bored with this talk of meteorites. Saturn stopped speaking and glared at the offenders, who looked up to see why the wizard had fallen silent. Saturn glared at them, and they wilted in fear and shrank down into their seats. “If I have your attention?” he said acidly. Silence was his only answer and he nodded to himself before continuing.

     "When the meteorite first came into my possession, I too thought that it was a natural object. A lump of debris drifting through the emptiness of space and gradually picking up a natural magical charge. A charge of magic that was, somehow, of a different variety to that found here on Tharia. However, as we created spells and orbs capable of detecting and probing its strange, alien magical charge directly, we discovered strange regularities in its magical field. Regularities that could only be the remnants of structured magical spells that had once been held by the object. The obvious conclusion was that the meteorite was the remains of an artificial object made mainly or entirely of metal. An object designed to do magic, much the same as the wands, staves and orbs that we ourselves use.

     "This, however, led to a new problem. How had this object come to be floating through empty space, as it had to have been in order for it to enter the atmosphere with enough speed to be melted out of all recognition? Had it been teleported to a great height for some reason? Possible, but hardly likely. Had it been lost from the surface of Kronos? Also unlikely, as it would have to have been thrown with great force to escape the smallest moon's feeble gravity. Kronos has an escape velocity of fifty miles an hour, which is within the capability of any reasonably capable redball pitcher, but the important point is that an object could not be lost by accident. You could not just drop something and watch it float away. It would have to have been cast with great force by someone standing on the surface of Kronos and wearing a Necklace of Vacuum Breathing. Possible, I admit, but again hardly likely. Also, any object lost in this way would have a conventional magical charge, perceptible to a wizard's magic sense, rather than this object's strange alien magic. No, I'm afraid there is only one reasonable conclusion. This object did not come from our world. It came from another."

     Most of the audience accepted this calmly. Only a few of the most intelligent, most imaginative wizards began to look worried.

     "I see that most of you do not see the significance of this conclusion," said Saturn, his single eye gleaming strangely. "You are thinking 'another new world, so what?' After all, those of us capable of walking the planes have visited dozens of worlds in other universes, and we have, in turn, received a good many visitors from these other worlds. Here in this very room we have two fine gentlemen who were born in another universe, came here exploring and decided to settle permanently. So, what if we are now receiving artifacts from yet another new world? Well, I will tell you." He paused, to give his words emphasis.

     “To visit another world in another dimension, one need only create a portal and then step through it. A simple enough task that it is within the capabilities of many of the wizards in this room, as well as to some of the followers of the Gods. To visit another world in our own universe, though, it is necessary to travel across the empty space separating the two worlds. And there is the problem, because those other worlds are very far away. Even those with an education in such matters find it hard to grasp just how very far away they are.

     “Even the other worlds circling our own yellow sun are far away, but they, at least, can be visited by teleportation. Normally, when you teleport between two places on Tharia you arrive more or less instantaneously, but when the wizard Besslinn teleported a test package to Lamon he was able to determine that it took more than five minutes for it to cross the distance, and that was when their orbits brought them closest together. Worlds circling other stars are a million times further away than that! Literally a million times further away! So far that no conceivable spell affect could possibly cross the distance without being attenuated to uselessness.

     “There are civilisations that have managed the trick. Civilisations in other planes of existence. They use natural philosophy, but of a form so advanced that it makes them virtual gods compared to us. They travel in ships propelled by forces and philosophies beyond our ability to even imagine. If we should ever come into direct contact with a civilisation like that, it would be the end of us. We would be like those tribesmen living in little mud huts whose entire way of life is subsumed by contact with our so called civilised way of life. Fortunately, the only star travelling civilisations we know of exist in other universes, and there seems to be some kind of rule or law that ensures that any civilisation that uses natural philosophy cannot use magic, and vice versa. My good friend and colleague Elmias Pastin advanced the theory that magic makes life so simple for enquiring minds, divination spells and so forth, that they never need to make the kind of effort that natural philosophy requires.

     “Which means we're safe from them. Right?” He paused for a moment, but no-one spoke up. Everyone was hooked now. The entire chamber was hanging on his every word.

     “We are safe from the ones we know of, yes,” he said, answering his own question. “We are safe from those star traveling civilisations in other universes. But if there's a civilisation of this power and magnitude right here, in our own universe…” His single eye gazed upwards as if he could look right through the chamber's ceiling and see the infinite stars above.

     “They'll be able to reach us without magic,” he said. “And it won't be just the odd plane walking individual this time, but an entire civilisation with the power to cross the vast interstellar gulfs. We don't know what they're like or what they want, but we do know one thing. Compared to them, we'll be like a tribe of naked, spear throwing savages. They'll have us totally outclassed in every way. Even if they mean us no harm, their civilisation could overwhelm our own like a pansy in a bramble patch. We could end up as nothing more than one of their minor, outermost provinces.”

     A wizard in the audience raised a hand, and Saturn recognised him with a nod of his head, formally granting him permission to speak. The wizard rose, and Thomas recognised him as Alabaster Cann, a junior illusionist attached to the staff of Therin Carandus, the University's head of illusionism. "What about the Shadowwars?" the middle aged wizard demanded. "What was that, if not an invasion from another universe?"

     "The vast majority of the Shadowarmies were living beings belonging to our own world," replied Saturn. "The Shadowwars were caused by a rift in the transdimensional medium that allowed a Demon Prince from the Pit to send his power through into our world, allowing him to recruit Tharian humans, humanoids and undead to his cause. It was not a transdimensional invasion. So far as we know, only one single individual was able to come through in person from the Pit, which, I know I don't have to remind you, is not a material plane, like our own, but one of the immaterial planes. One of the final resting places of the souls of the dead. One of the domains of the Gods.

     "Similarly, we have no need to fear invasion from any of the other varieties of universe to be found in the higher dimensions. The astral, or ethereal plane as some people call it. The transcendental planes, the parasitic planes and the partial planes, many of which are inhabited by their own unique forms of life. None of these are any threat to us here on Tharia. In addition, many universes have natural laws that are incompatible with the natural laws of our unverse, causing objects or people brought from one universe to another to decay, sometimes explosively. Yet another barrier to transdimensional invasion.

     "But now we come to this meteorite. This seemingly innocent lump of cold iron. The remnant of an artifact of an unknown civilization which arrived here by literally falling out of the sky. Possibly the harbinger of a threat beyond our ability to do anything about whatsoever.”

    “So why are we here?” someone called out. The Master of Ceremonies stood in outrage and waved for the proctors, but the Director gestured for him to sit back down. Thomas nodded approvingly. Considering the magnitude of the subject being discussed, we can afford a little latitude, he thought.

     “If these people outclass us so completely that there’s nothing we can do to stop them,” continued the heckler, “then what's the point in talking about it? This mysterious ship of space was destroyed, you say, so maybe they don’t have the ability to cross the gulf of space after all. And if they can, then we might just as well carry on with our normal lives for as long as we can until they arrive. Why worry about something that might never happen and that can't be stopped if it does happen?”

     “Because there are other possibilities,” Saturn replied. “Possibilities that are bad for us, but nothing like as bad as the worst case scenario. There are other worlds circling our own yellow sun. Maybe the Shipbuilders came from one of them, in which case they wouldn’t be so much more powerful than us for there to be no hope.”

     “Thousands of years of observation have failed to spot any sign of intelligent activity upon any of them,” replied the heckler. Thomas looked around to try to identify him, but he couldn't see who was speaking. “Lamon, Sereena, Rama… We have no reason to think there is any life, let alone civilisation, on any of them.”

     "There are other possibilities," replied Saturn. "There could be a planet circling our yellow sun that we are unaware of, perhaps because it is hidden from us by an unimaginably vast curtain of invisibility, or there could be a free standing transdimensional portal somewhere out there in space, connecting our universe with another material plane. Both possibilities amount to the same thing, though, as whichever it is, the citizens of this civilisation would still have to cross millions of miles of empty space to reach our world, and they can only do this if they are at least as sophisticated as we are. Personally, I favour the free standing portal theory. Such things are known to form from time to time on our own world, created spontaneously by accumulations of randomised magic, whereas it is hard to imagine a planet orbiting our own sun remaining undiscovered all these centuries. Especially during the days of the Agglemonian Empire when astronomy was something of a national hobby, and the amount of magical power required to make a whole planet invisible is simply unimaginable."

     “This is all just useless speculation!” said a second heckler, encouraged by the success of the first. “How much do we actually know?”

     "As soon as we realised that this object came from another civilisation,” said Saturn, “we searched the farmer’s field where it had fallen. We searched this and neighbouring areas and found several smaller meteorites which we brought back here and subjected to divination spells in an attempt to learn more about their origin. The alien, magical field permeating the largest meteorite rendered all our spells useless, but I obtained some good images from the others. Results that, quite frankly, terrified us and which led us to take the extraordinary actions which we have been taking for the past few years. Just recently, what is more, we have discovered a talented young man whose magic sense can probe the alien magic in the largest meteorite, and he was able to successfully cast an Identify spell on it, obtaining results that confirmed our earlier findings."