He shook his head. No, he argued. In the first place the Book of the Future gave no time. It might have been ten or one thousand years they had to exist. And, in the second place, man, he said, speaking as he always did in parables--man struggled daily to live, to go on, though he knew ultimately he must die. “Still, if your Book of the Future be true, then must it provide that the Kitche Maya were fated to give up the struggle,” I argued. “That is as it may be,” he declared. “Even I do not know all there is to know of these matters.” Also, he confirmed my suspicion that the Mayas had been decimated by using the radioactive clay for etching their sculptures. Nearly all of those who handled the stuff, or the monuments, became afflicted with a terrible malady. They withered away, their teeth fell out, their bones dissolved and they died in agony. Some few survived for years; some, still fewer, recovered, mutilated and deformed but physically sound. Such, he declared, was Kinchi Haman. And, he added, all those who recovered possessed most warped, cruel, vindictive and ruthless natures. This, too had led to the downfall of the Mayas. Men, who had been humane, wise, benign rulers, seemed to go mad. They oppressed the people, ordered wholesale human sacrifices, made war upon one another. Fathers fought sons and brothers fought brothers. “But that,” he sighed, “was foretold in the Book of Kukulcan, as was the City of Mictolan.” And, as I have said, the presence of the clay in the valley nearly resulted in the extermination of the people here. But though the radioactive mineral had brought death and destruction to the race, it had also brought great blessings in the end. They had learned that, combined with certain other substances, it was not only harmless, it was even beneficial. In the form in which it occurred in the rocks, it illuminated the caverns and the interiors of the temples, and even cast a soft half-light over the entire valley. And he, Nohul Voh, he declared, had learned to harness it, to make use of its power. * * * * *