the consultant chamber. A stained glass window further on rotated by silent machinery flung colors over his face as he passed. A golden disk chronometer fixed in the ceiling behind a carved crystal face said ten-thirty.

Suddenly he stopped in front of a book cabinet and opened the glass door. "Here's the one," he said out loud again. "Yeah, I know we haven't got time, but it will explain it to you better than I can." He pulled a book from the row of books. "We used this in school," he said. "A long time ago."

The book was Catham's Revised History of Toromon. He opened the sharkskin cover and flipped a few pages into the text.

"... from a few libraries that survived the Great Fire (from which we will date all subsequent events). Civilization was reduced beyond barbarism. But eventually the few survivors on the Island of Toron established a settlement, a village, a city. Now they pushed to the mainland, and the shore became the central source of food for the island's population which now devoted itself to manufacturing. On the coast, farms and fishing villages flourished. On the island, science and industry became sudden factors in the life of Toromon, now an empire.

"Beyond the plains at the coast, explorers discovered the forest people who lived in the strip of jungle that held in its crescent the stretch of mainland. They were a mutant breed, gigantic in physical stature, peaceful in nature. They quickly became part of Toromon's empire, with no resistance.

"Beyond the jungle were the gutted fields of lava and dead earth, and it was here that the strange metal tetron was discovered. A great empire has a great crime rate, and our penal system was used to supply miners for the tetron. Now technology leaped ahead, and we developed many uses for the power that could be released from the tetron.

"Then, beyond the lava fields, we discovered what it was that had enlarged the bodies of the forest people, what it was that had killed all green things beyond the jungle. Lingering from the days of the Great Fire, a wide strip of radioactive land still burned all around the lava fields, cutting us off from further expansion.

"Going toward that field of death, the plants became gnarled, distorted caricatures of themselves. Then only rock. Death was long if a man ventured in and came back. First immense thirst; then the skin dries out; blindness, fever, madness, at last death; this is what awaited the transgressor.

 Prev. P 13/123 next