old this devil-god for long
and that swiftly its blight would spread!

And then a world that was all colossal reek of cruelty and terror; a
welter of lusts, of hatreds and of torment; a chaos of horror in which
the Dweller waxing ever stronger, the ghastly hordes of those it had
consumed growing ever greater, wreaked its inhuman will!

At the last a ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the
shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its
meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless,
mindless dead-alive, their shells illumined with the Dweller's
infernal glory--and flaming over this vampirized earth like a flare
from some hell far, infinitely far, beyond the reach of man's farthest
flung imagining--the Dweller!

Rador jumped to his feet; walked to the whispering globe. He bent over
its base; did something with its mechanism; beckoned to us. The globe
swam rapidly, faster than ever I had seen it before. A low humming
arose, changed into a murmur, and then from it I heard Lugur's voice
clearly.

"It is to be war then?"

There was a chorus of assent--from the Council, I thought.

"I will take the tall one named--_Larree_." It was the priestess's
voice. "After the three _tal_, you may have him, Lugur, to do with as
you will."

"No!" it was Lugur's voice again, but with a rasp of anger. "All must
die."

"He shall die," again Yolara. "But I would that first he see Lakla
pass--and that she know what is to happen to him."

"No!" I started--for this was Marakinoff. "Now is no time, Yolara,
for one's own desires. This is my counsel. At the end of the three
_tal_ Lakla will come for our answer. Your men will be in ambush and
they will slay her and her escort quickly with the _Keth_. But not
till that is done must the three be slain--and then quickly. With
Lakla dead we shall go forth to the Silent Ones--and I promise you
that I will find the way to destroy them!"

"It is well!" It was Lugur.

"It _is_ well, Yolara." It was a woman's voice, and I knew it for that
old one of ravaged beauty. "Cast from your mind whatever is in it for
this stranger--either of love or hatred. In this the Council is with
Lugur and the man of wisdom."

There was a silence. Then came the priestess's voice, sullen
but--beaten.

"It is well!"

"Let the three be taken now by Rador to the temple and given to the
High Priest Sator"--thus Lugur--"until what we have planned comes to
pa