"Then I have news for you, my Emperor," Rurak told him, "that will perhaps not be pleasant. Your father, the Emperor, and your two brothers have all died. We have come to find you and take you back to Mars before the New Year." The bearded giant's hard fingers sunk convulsively into Rurak's shoulder and he said nothing for a time. Then his tall body stiffened proudly and he smiled gravely down at the young Martian. "I am ready to return and assume my duties," he said simply. * * * * * "Two days we have been floating down this stinking river," squat Elko Sohm groaned as he wielded his crude native paddle. "Two days with the blistering hot rain scalding our poor backs and the stench of mouldering purple vegetation in our nostrils. Hurry, you tell me, that we may reach the _Tekna_ before she blasts off again for Mars. "If you ask me we'd better have stayed with the old _Indra_ and waited for them to find us. For seventeen long years, figuring by the shorter year of this soggy hell of a planet, we lived there on that hilltop. There was no danger from the swampland monsters and only the green-scaled thuftars could get near us. And now you take me, a warped wreck of an old man, and plunge into the thick of this unknown hell." Rurak grinned crookedly through lips that insect-bites had swollen grotesquely. Ahead of him the glistening form of Tis dipped his paddle rhythmically into the liquid scum that floored the sluggish river. Tis was at home here in the watery blue marshes and liquid mud flats of the continent's eastern shore. Somewhere ahead the huge bulk of the _Tekna_ wallowed atop a marshy island not far from one of the myriad crystalline growths that dotted this three-tailed continent's marshy places. Seeking always the marshy seaboards or inland rivers and lakes these colonies of linked, silicon-based, crystalline cells--sometimes called the "cities" of Earth by imaginative astronomers--spread over miles of area and soared in fantastic towers and spires hundreds of feet into the thick moist air of Earth's heavens. And toward that crystal signboard beside the Great Sea they were driving their rude dugout to carry the glad news that the new Emperor was found. Two days had they waited for another flying wing to contact the hilltop and on the second night old Elko Sohm, Tis, and Rurak had slipped away in the darkness and headed eastward. Past native villages of thatch and mud floating upon living rafts of vegetation they raced and through dense water-lanes where the blue and purple of foliage shut off the murky light of the swollen sun.... "Elko Sohm! Rurak Dun!" the cry sounded faintly from the foggy depths of the river behind them. Tis guided the clumsy boat into the arched cave of a swamp tree's roots and picked up his spear. Elko Sohm grunted as he stripped the oiled leather case from about his sturdy crossbow.