f it and the
transmitter as registered by the various meters he had made.

"Weak, but it will reach the Gern monitor station on Athena," he said,
"It's ready to send--what do you want to say?"

"Make it something short," he said. "Make it, _'Ragnarok calling.'_"

George poised his finger over the transmitting key. "This will set
forces in motion that can never be recalled. What we do here this
morning is going to cause a lot of Gerns--or Ragnarok people--to die."

"It will be the Gerns who die," he said. "Send the signal."

"Like you, I believe the same thing," George said. "I have to believe it
because that's the way I want it to be. I hope we're right. It's
something we'll never know."

He began depressing the key.

* * * * *

A boy was given the job of operating the key and the signal went out
daily until the freezing of winter stopped the waterwheel that powered
the generator.

The sending of the signals was resumed when spring came and the
prospecting parties continued their vain search for metals.

The suns continued moving south and each year the springs came later,
the falls earlier. In the spring of forty-five he saw that he would have
to make his final decision.

By then they had dwindled until they numbered only sixty-eight; the
Young Ones gray and rapidly growing old. There was no longer any use to
continue the prospecting--if any metals were to be found they were at
the north end of the plateau where the snow no longer melted during the
summer. They were too few to do more than prepare for what the Old Ones
had feared they might have to face--Big Winter. That would require the
work of all of them.

Sheets of mica were brought down from the Craigs, the summits of which
were deeply buried under snow even in midsummer. Stoves were made of
fireclay and mica, which would give both heat and light and would be
more efficient than the open fireplaces. The innermost caves were
prepared for occupation, with multiple doors to hold out the cold and
with laboriously excavated ventilation ducts and smoke outlets.

There were sixty of them in the fall of fifty, when all had been done
that could be done to prepare for what might come.

* * * * *

"There aren't many of the Earth-born left now," Bob Craig said to him
one night as they sat in the flickering light of a stove. "And there
hasn't been time for there to be many of the Ragnarok-born. Th