However, the Oyarsa of Earth - which is known as Thulcandra, "the silent planet" - has become "bent", or evil, and has been restricted to Earth after "a great war" on the authority of Maleldil, the ruler of the universe. Ransom is ashamed at how little he can tell the Oyarsa of Malacandra about Earth, and how foolish he and other humans seem to Oyarsa. While the two are talking, Devine and Weston are brought in, guarded by hrossa, because they have killed three members of that species. Weston does not believe that Oyarsa exists and he is incapable of conceiving that the Malacandrians are anything but ignorant natives, exploitable and expendable. This emerges in the course of a long speech in which Weston justifies his proposed invasion of Malacandra on "progressive" and evolutionary grounds. Weston's motives are shown to be more complex than profit: he is bent on expanding humanity through the universe, abandoning each planet and star system as its resources are exhausted and it becomes uninhabitable. In Ransom's attempts at translation, the brutality and crudity of Weston's ambitions are laid bare. While acknowledging that Weston is acting out of a sense of duty to his species and does not share Devine's greed for gold, Oyarsa tells Weston and Devine that he cannot tolerate their disruptive presence on Malacandra. He directs them to leave the planet immediately, despite very unfavourable orbital conditions. Oyarsa offers Ransom the option of staying on Malacandra, but Ransom decides he does not belong there either. The three men voyage back to Earth in the spaceship, and their 90 days' worth of air and other supplies nearly run out before they arrive. In the final chapter, Lewis introduces himself as a character into his own novel. He had written to Ransom enquiring whether he had come across the Latin word Oyarses, discovered in a mediaeval Neoplatonist work. This prompts Ransom to share his secret and the two resolve to hinder Weston from doing further evil in view of "the rapid march of [contemporary] events". Characters Dr Elwin Ransom – A professor of philology at a college of the University of Cambridge. Dr Weston – A thick-set physicist, ruthless and arrogant, who mocks "classics and history and such trash" in favour of the hard sciences. Dick Devine – Weston's accomplice who "was quite ready to laugh at Weston's solemn scientific idealism. He didn't give a