The Martian Old Ones had reached an elegant and awesome trial solution to their major esthetic problem and put it aside for a few filledthrees to let it generate new problems.  At which time, unhurriedly but at once and almost absent-mindedly, the alien nestling which they had returned to his proper world was tapped of what he had learned of his people and dropped, after cherishing, since he was of no further interest to their purposes.