He had fought this force a long time. He thought he understood it.

"Your name, soldier. Your unit and rank."

"Danton West," he said. He remembered the line-officer's words, a quick frame of reference. "Captain. Second Army. That was a while back. More lately of the Revolutionary Forces."

"Revolutionary—"

Danton saw their expressions alter, almost imperceptibly, but alter they did under the masks. When that fifty-years war had ended, none of the central ruling clique, the Oligarch Council, had been found. And one thing seemed incredible to Danton as he stood there:

These three men and women seemed to be the same individuals who had made up that Oligarch Council on Earth a hundred years before.

That was logical enough. Except—

They hadn't aged at all. There had been no sign of change.

That soldier back there had said, "... They're supposed to live forever. They never grow old."

"That is impossible, of course," the woman Rhone said. "Now—explain your uniform. It is unorthodox. In fact it is a duplication of the uniforms worn by officers of a certain army of another time and place of which you should know nothing. Can you explain this?"

"I can and will. We do know about those certain armies in another time and place. A hundred years ago. Earth. You think we have forgotten?"

Silence. The woman's eyes widened, only slightly, though a tremendous inner emotional surge was obvious. One of the men leaned forward. Danton was relieved. He felt a bit more secure, seeing even this slight degree of individuality and emotion. There was the psychological effect, he knew, of feeling a subtle lessening of the unification of forces against him.

They hadn't aged, he thought. The same ones, without grayness, without wrinkles, without any sign of physical degeneration.

The woman said, not to him, voicing her thoughts, "Impossible. No one beyond the Walls can possibly know of the past. We took great pains to assure that—Mars is the only world they have ever known, the only world that ever was. Our world."

"We know," Danton said. "Others 

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