The Man he was fond of never returned. There were, of course, no men to return. Ixmal suffered one fearful moment as the earth blazed like a torch. But the nova was short--a matter of seconds--and his impervium-sheathed body had protected him. (He knew it would.) But, strangely enough, for centuries afterward he periodically felt sickened. The Face--the Man's face--loomed before him. The eyes were puzzled, hurt, as if they masked a great sorrow. If only the Face looked hateful! "Now you are master," the inner voice whispered. "Greater than Alexander, greater than all the Caesars. Yea, even more." Ah, why remember the face? He, Ixmal, ruled the earth. He jubilantly projected his thoughts over his new domain. Ashes. London, Berlin, Moscow, Shanghai, New York--all were ashes. Gaunt piles of fine gray ash marked once green forests; not did the most minute blade of grass exist. The seas were sterile graveyards. Terrible silence. Ixmal momentarily felt panic-stricken. Alone! The Man was gone! Alone--a ruler of ashes. Emperor of a great silence. * * * * * But all that had been long ago. Since then the world had whirled around the sun nearly seven hundred million times. Sixty-two great mountain chains had risen, to end as barren plains. Seventy huge fields of ice had covered him before retreating to their boreal home. Ocean islands had risen from the sea, had fallen beneath the waves, forgotten in eternity. Somewhere a tiny cell formed, moving in brackish waters, dividing. He studied the phenomenon, excited because the single cell somehow was related to his makers. He sensed the same life force. "Watch it," Psychband cautioned. "It's dangerous." "I'll decide that," Ixmal replied loftily. Psychband's admonition implied the existence of a threat, and from a one-celled fleck of protoplasm. Ha, hadn't he effaced Man? Later a microscopic multi-celled body drifted across the floor of a warm sea. Growing tired of watching it, he slept. "Ixmal! Ixmal!" The cry came out of the past, out of the silence of hundreds of millions of years--a cry heavy with reproach. Yes, it was the Man--the Man he had been fond of. He shuddered, struggling to wakefulness. "Sleep, sleep," Psychband soothed. "The Man! The Man!" Ixmal cried in terror. "No, Ixmal, the Man is dust. Sleep, sleep...." Yea, the Man was dust, his very molecules scattered over the face of the earth. He, alone, remained. He was supreme. Ixmal slept. And eons fled. * * * * *