the dials climbed, flickered, and steadied.

Norman Lake looked from them to Humbolt, his pale gray eyes coldly
satisfied. "Full output," he said. "We have the power we need this
time."

Jim Chiara was at the transmitter and they waited while he threw
switches and studied dials. Every component of the transmitter had been
tested but they had not had the power to test the complete assembly.

"That's it," he said at last, looking up at them. "She's ready, after
almost two hundred years of wanting her."

Humbolt wondered what the signal should be and saw no reason why it
should not be the same one that had been sent out with such hope a
hundred and sixty-five years ago.

"All right, Jim," he said. "Let the Gerns know we're waiting for
them--make it 'Ragnarok calling' again."

The transmitter key rattled and the all-wave signal that the Gerns
could not fail to receive went out at a velocity of five light-years a
day:

_Ragnarok calling--Ragnarok calling--Ragnarok calling--_

It was the longest summer Humbolt had ever experienced. He was not alone
in his impatience--among all of them the restlessness flamed higher as
the slow days dragged by, making it almost impossible to go about their
routine duties. The gentle mockers sensed the anticipation of their
masters for the coming battle and they became nervous and apprehensive.
The prowlers sensed it and they paced about the town in the dark of
night; watching, listening, on ceaseless guard against the mysterious
enemy their masters waited for. Even the unicorns seemed to sense what
was coming and they rumbled and squealed in their corrals at night,
red-eyed with the lust for blood and sometimes attacking the log walls
with blows that shook the ground.

The interminable days went their slow succession and summer gave way to
fall. The hundredth day dawned, cold and gray with the approach of
winter; the day of the Gerns.

But no cruiser came that day, nor the next. He stood again on the
stockade wall in the evening of the third day, Fenrir and Sigyn beside
him. He listened for the first dim, distant sound of the Gern cruiser
and heard only the moaning of the wind around him.

Winter was coming. Always, on Ragnarok, winter was coming or the brown
death of summer. Ragnarok was a harsh and barren prison, and no amount
of desire could ever make it otherwise. Only the coming of a Gern
cruiser could ever offer them the bloody, violent opportunity to regain
their freedom.