when we sent men out
to glorious adventures on the other planets! Aye! Five millenniums ago
it was that we achieved space travel. In those days--"

Braanol ceased in his reminiscences, aware that these two were trying to
get their thoughts through to him.

"That is why we have come! The Empress Uldulla, too, wishes a story. The
story of the first space-flight from Diskra, and the events that brought
it about. And of how you--"

"Aye! Of how _I_ came to be as you see me now! I shall be delighted, my
children, to tell it again. But first, prepare the trans-telector so
that it may be recorded faithfully."

Braanol directed them to a machine on the far side of the room, and
instructed them as to its operation. Soon the hundreds of tiny coils
were humming, and a maze of tubes fed out of the machine, on which would
be recorded Braanol's every thought. For a moment he paused, gently
swaying, pulsing, a huge independent brain suspended in the pale green
liquid. Then he began his story.

* * * * *

Your Supreme Beneficence! When the imperial messengers came to me,
bringing the communication with which you deigned to address my
decrepit solitude, it was like a glorious ray of light come to illumine
the deepening darkness of my declining years!

It is with trepidation that I set about to fulfill your Exalted Command.
Five millenniums, aye, even more, have passed, since those who were part
of that segment of history into which you inquire, have become but
drifting dust. Only within the feeble memory of your humblest servant is
there any record of it.

Five millenniums! Aye! That was truly the golden period of our beloved
Diskra--not that our period under _Your_ Serene Effulgence is not golden
indeed! But in that day all Diskra was under the glorious rule of
Palladin. His city on the scarlet shores of our central sea was the
wonder of us _all_. Aye! We had a sea then, where there is now but
desert.

The intelligent planets were three: our own Diskra, of course, fourth
from the sun. And nearest the sun, Mirla, that fiery globe, where life
apes the quality of our own salamander, existing by necessity near the
flames. And second from the sun Venia, the cloud-capped world, where
life exalts the virtues of the fish. Of the third planet, Terra, we then
knew little.

Our cities faced the sun in those days, towering in polychromatic
splendor. Height was no obstacle then, for we had wings--wings!