“I don’t think so,” said Saunders. “From our story, it doesn’t look that way, does it?”

“No,” said Hunda. “You’d better settle down in some time and make the best of matters.”

“Why not with us?” asked Vargor eagerly.

“We’d welcome you with all our hearts,” said Taury, “but I cannot honestly advise you to stay. These are evil times.”

It was a harsh language they spoke, a ringing metallic tongue brought in by the barbarians. But from her throat, Saunders thought, it was utter music.

“We’ll at least stay a few days,” he said impulsively. “It’s barely possible we can do something.”

“I doubt that,” said Hunda practically. “We’ve retrogressed, yes. For instance, the principle of the time projector was lost long ago. But still, there’s a lot of technology left which was far beyond your own times.”

“I know,” said Saunders defensively. “But—well, frankly—we haven’t fitted in any other time, as well.”

“Will there ever be a decent age again?” asked one of the old courtiers bitterly.

The avian from Klakkahar turned his eyes on Saunders. “It wouldn’t be cowardice for you to leave a lost cause which you couldn’t possibly aid,” he said in his thin, accented tones. “When the Anvardi come, I think we will all die.”

“What is de tale of de Dreamer?” asked Belgotai. “You’ve mentioned some such.”

It was like a sudden darkness in the room. There was silence, under the whistling wind, and men sat wrapped in their own cheerless thoughts. Finally Taury spoke.

“He is the last of the Vro-Hi, counselors of the Empire. That one still lives—the Dreamer. But there can never really be another Empire, at least not on the pattern of the old one. No other race is intelligent enough to coordinate it.”

Hunda shook his big head, puzzled. “The Dreamer once told me that might be for the best,” he said. “But he wouldn’t explain.”

“How did you happen to come here—to Earth, of all planets?” Saunders asked.

Taury smiled with a certain grim humor. “The last few generations have been one of the Imperium’s less fortunate periods,” she said. “In short, the most the Emperor ever commanded was a small fleet. My father had even that shot away from him. He fled with three ships, out toward the Periphery. It occurred to him that Sol was worth trying as a refuge.”

The Solar System had been cruelly scarred in the dark ages. The great engineering works which had made the other planets habitable were ruined, and Earth herself had been laid waste. There had been a weapon used which consumed atmospheric carbon dioxide. Saunders, remembering the explanation for the Ice Ages offered by geologists of his own time, nodded in dark understanding. Only a few starveling savages lived on the planet now, and indeed the whole Sirius Sector was so desolated that no conqueror thought it worth bothering with.

It had pleased the Emperor to make his race’s ancient home the capital of the Galaxy. He had moved into the ruined fortress of Brontothor, built some seven thousand years ago by the nonhuman Grimmani and blasted out of action a millennium later. Renovation of parts of it, installation of weapons and defensive works, institution of agriculture…“Why, he had suddenly acquired a whole planetary system!” said Taury with a half-sad little smile.