No, nothing was known about time theory. Their visit had been welcome and all that, but now would they please go on? They didn’t fit in with the neatly regulated culture of Terra.

“I don’t like it,” said Saunders as they walked back toward the machine. “Arsfel swore the Imperium would keep expanding its actual as well as its nominal sphere of influence. But it’s gone static now. Why?”

“Ih tink,” said Belgotai, “dat spite of all his fancy mathematics, yuh were right. Nawthing lasts forever.”

“But—my God!”

Chapter 4

End of Empire

34,000 a.d. The Matriarchy was gone. The city was a tumbled heap of fire-blackened rocks. Skeletons lay in the ruins.

“The barbarians are moving again,” said Saunders bleakly. “They weren’t here so very long ago; these bones are still fresh, and they’ve got a long ways to go to dead center. An empire like this one will be many thousands of years in dying. But it’s doomed already.”

“What’ll we do?” asked Belgotai.

“Go on,” said Saunders tonelessly. “What else can we do?”

35,000 a.d. A peasant hut stood under huge old trees. Here and there a broken column stuck out of the earth, remnant of the city. A bearded man in coarsely woven garments fled wildly with his woman and brood of children as the machine appeared.

36,000 a.d. There was a village again, with a battered old spaceship standing hard by. There were half a dozen different races, including man, moving about, working on the construction of some enigmatic machine. They were dressed in plain, shabby clothes, with guns at their sides and the hard look of warriors in their eyes. But they didn’t treat the new arrivals too badly.

Their chief was a young man in the cape and helmet of an officer of the Empire. But his outfit was at least a century old, and he was simply head of a small troop which had been hired from among the barbarian hordes to protect this part of Terra. Oddly, he insisted he was a loyal vassal of the Emperor.

The Empire! It was still a remote glory, out there among the stars. Slowly it waned, slowly the barbarians encroached while corruption and civil war tore it apart from the inside, but it was still the pathetic, futile hope of intelligent beings throughout the Galaxy. Some day it would be restored. Some day civilization would return to the darkness of the outer worlds, greater and more splendid than ever. Men dared not believe otherwise.

“But we’ve got a job right here,” shrugged the chief. “Tautho of Sirius will be on Sol’s necks soon. I doubt if we can stand him off for long.”

“And what’ll yuh do den?” challenged Belgotai.

The young-old face twisted in a bitter smile. “Die, of course. What else is there to do—these days?”

They stayed overnight with the troopers. Belgotai had fun swapping lies about warlike exploits, but in the morning he decided to go on with Saunders. The age was violent enough, but its hopelessness daunted even his tough soul.