1.
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The beacon still called from deep within the rough-
walled fastness of the cave. Its message was fainter now.
Each planet year had put more strain upon this mecha-
nism, though its creators had attempted to make it ever-
lasting. They believed they had foreseen every eventuality.
They hadчexcept the weakness within their own rule and
the nature of the world from which the beacon called.
Time had been swallowed, was gone, and still the beacon
kept to its task, while outside the cave nations had risen
and decayed, men themselves had changed and changed
again. Everything the makers of the beacon had known
was erased during those years, destroyed by the very ac-
tion of nature. Seas swept in upon the land, then retired,
the force of their waves taking whole cities and countries.
Mountains reared up, so that the shattered remains of
once-proud ports were lifted into the thin air of great
heights. Deserts crept in over green fields. A moon fell
from the sky and another took its place.
Still the beacon called and called, summoning those who
had vanished and left behind only legends, strange, time-
distorted tales. And now there was another period of cha-
otic darkness in the affairs of men. An empire had crashed
under its own unwieldy weight and the strain of years.
Barbarians ravaged, picking its carcass like vultures. Fire
and sword, death and the living death of slavery marched
across the land. And yet the beacon called.
Its heart-fires were dim now. From time to time the call
faltered, as a man in mortal danger might gasp for breath
between shouts for aid.
Then that call, so faint now, was finally heard far out in
space. A strange arrow of metal caught the impulse, and
deep in this ship's heart installations which had been silent
and unresponding for centuries were activated. The arrow
5
6 Andre Norton
altered course, using the beam of the call as a line to draw
itself down.
There was no living thing aboard that ship. It had been
devised with desperate hope by entities close to the extinc-
tion of all they held important, more important than their
