uddenly. He voiced only a whisper, and yet the sound was
shockingly loud in that crystal vault.

"They have asked me already. Tell them no, Stark! Tell them no!"

He looked at Ciara then, a look of murderous hatred. "If you turn them
loose upon Kushat, I will kill you with my own hands before I die."

Stark spoke again, silently, to the seven. "I do not understand."

* * * * *

Again the struggling, difficult thought. "We are the old race, the kings
of the glacial ice. Once we held all the land beyond the mountains,
outside the pass you call the Gates of Death."

Stark had seen the ruins of the towers out on the moors. He knew how far
their kingdom had extended.

"We _controlled_ the ice, far outside the polar cap. Our towers
blanketed the land with the dark force drawn from Mars itself, from the
magnetic field of the planet. That radiation bars out heat, from the
Sun, and even from the awful winds that blow warm from the south. So
there was never any thaw. Our cities were many, and our race was great.

"Then came Ban Cruach, from the south....

"He waged a war against us. He learned the secret of the crystal globes,
and learned how to reverse their force and use it against us. He,
leading his army, destroyed our towers one by one, and drove us back....

"Mars needed water. The outer ice was melted, our lovely cities crumbled
to nothing, so that creatures like Ban Cruach might have water! And our
people died.

"We retreated at the last, to this our ancient polar citadel behind the
Gates of Death. Even here, Ban Cruach followed. He destroyed even this
tower once, at the time of the thaw. But this city is founded in polar
ice--and only the upper levels were harmed. Even Ban Cruach could not
touch the heart of the eternal polar cap of Mars!

"When he saw that he could not destroy us utterly, he set himself in
death to guard the Gates of Death with his blazing sword, that we might
never again reclaim our ancient dominion.

"That is what we mean when we ask for freedom. We ask that you take away
the sword of Ban Cruach, so that we may once again go out through the
Gates of Death!"

Stark cried aloud, hoarsely, "_No!_"

He knew the barren deserts of the south, the wastes of red dust, the
dead sea bottoms--the terrible thirst of Mars, growing greater with
every year of the million that had passed since Ban Cruach locked the
Gates of Death.

He knew the canals, the pitiful water