But the lean face of Kel Aran, as he still manipulated the telescreen to observe those frightful battles behind us, remained very grave. "No man is safe," he said darkly. "Nor ever will be, unless Malgarth is destroyed. For the robots have thrown away the last pretense of friendship. Now they destroy their duped human allies of the Galactic Guard. Next they will turn upon the defenseless human citizens of every inhabited planet. We must find Verel and the Stone soon--or never." "Find them," repeated the tall, swarthy Saturnian. "But how?" The Earthman shook his yellow head. "I don't know," he whispered bleakly. "Setsi might have helped again, but she is lost. I believe that Verel is in the hands of the robots--otherwise they could not have copied all of her, to trap us. She may be on Black Mystoon. We'd go there, to seek her." He shrugged, hopelessly, wearily. "But no man has ever found that hidden lair of Malgarth." He straightened again, and his lean jaw squared. "We can only search," he muttered. "Search every world where men still live--every world the robots have not conquered. Till we find her--or we die!" The doomed system of Ledros fell far behind, until its vari-colored suns merged into a point of white, until that dimming point was lost upon the telescreen. Planet after planet, wheeling star after star, we scanned with the far-probing finger of the achronic telethron-beam. And we found no men. The technomatons of Malgarth had been everywhere victorious. Their black victory was a thing that crushed the mind. A foreboding silence came to fill the small hull of the _Barihorn_, so heavy that it seemed to muffle the racing beat of her generators. Kel Aran ceased hopelessly to sing his reckless ballads of the Falcon. Watching his engines with weary red eyes, little Rogo Nug chewed his _goona-roon_ in silence. Zerek Oom made little noise with his pots and pans, and none complained when a mealtime was forgotten. But at last an eager cry rang through the silent ship. "Here!" Kel crouched trembling before the cabinet of the telescreen. "A planet where the war still rages. See! The machines have not yet won--not utterly!" The planet was vast and ancient Meldoon, the outermost of a system of three. The two inward worlds had already fallen to the robots. Their continents had been leveled to featureless plains, pocked here and there with black sprawling aggregations of cyclopean machines. All green was gone from them--all life extirpated. Even their seas had been confined to geometric basins. * * * * * World machines! Sight of them, by any living being, must have set in the heart an intolerable pain. "What good could come of such a fearful triumph?" whispered the grim Saturnian, standing dark and gaunt above his control bars. "The machines are dead. Their power is only the counterfeit of life. And no life can grow from death."