"So for a time they kept the Raider, and it grew swiftly in power and intelligence, until it became a deity to the Kanlars, a being whose every word to them was law. Again the council warned them to destroy their creation, and again they agreed to do so. But in secret, on a night soon after, every one of the Kanlars assembled on their air-boats and fled from the city, taking with them the Raider. "We could not know where they had gone, but sent out many scouts to search for them. And when all our scouts had returned without finding trace of them, we decided that they had fled with their evil god to another planet, and so the matter rested. We had always thought that the ice-fields in the north extended clear to the pole, and could not know of the land there where the Kanlars had gone. "But now, with the knowledge the brain-reader gleaned from you while you were unconscious, all the people in Kom know the peril that hangs over them, know that the Raider and the Kanlars have gathered thousands of fierce warriors from all ages, and that they plan to sweep down and loot our city and kill its people. So the council meets, now, to decide what course of action we will take." Kethra finished, and I silently pondered his amazing story, but Lantin broke in with a query. "Two things puzzle me," he said; "how is it that you speak the same tongue as the Kanlars, and why are there no cylindrical buildings in the city below? You spoke of each people building its own design of dwellings here, but there are no cylinders." "When the Kanlars fled," Kethra explained, "the cylinders were demolished, for none of the other peoples would then live in them. As to our language, it was always the same, for all the four cities. You call it the Kanlar tongue because you heard it first from them, but it is equally the language of the people of Kom." * * * * * Before we could ask more questions, a single bell-note sounded from a corner of the room. "The council," murmured Kethra; "you are summoned before it." He motioned us out of the room and led us down the corridor outside, toward a small elevator that was curiously familiar in appearance, there in that building of the future. A lever was touched and we flashed silently down a long shaft, past level after level of the great cone's interior. The car stopped, and we stepped out of it into a small antechamber. Following Kethra across it, we strode through a high, arched entrance, into a great amphitheater, a semicircular room with bank on bank of rising tiers of seats. In each seat was a man attired like Kethra, and the gaze of all was instantly focused on us as we entered. On a dais at the semicircle's center sat four men, older than the others, and there was another chair beside the four, which was empty. A servant swiftly placed two collapsible seats on the dais, on which Lantin and I seated ourselves. Then Kethra strode to the front of the dais and began to address the assemblage.