There were perhaps seconds before the armed women of the Thrayxite guard detail would break from the forest's edge. He stumbled, fell, and his outstretched hands touched the round, shiny thing, and he could smell the reek of Cain's smouldering skeleton. Kriijorl and Judith hesitated. "Damn it, run!" and he felt his scream tear at his dry throat, and then clutched the metal disk to him and regained his feet in a single whip-like motion, and bolted after them toward the gaping air lock of the ship that Cain had never reached. There was a hissing sound and a wave of heat crackled behind him, seared his flesh beneath his tattered tunic. And there was another, inches before him, scorching smoking scars in the soft green turf, and shouted orders filled the air scant yards behind him. Then somehow he was at the air lock, and strong hands were pulling him over its edge, and it swung to, glowed red as a bolt of raw energy spent itself harmlessly against it. "Now Ihelos!" Mason said as he fought for new breath. * * * * * It was white, all white around him. He tried to sit up but there was the touch of gentle hands that stayed him, lowered him back upon the bed. There were two of them--tall, like Vikings, and memory returned slowly. There was a smaller one, too, standing straight and erect beside him, like a proud queen from the pages of Earth's colorful history. Judith. And Kriijorl. And another. And in his hands there was the silver disk. The can. The can of records. The Book of the Saints. He tried again to straighten, and then heard the voice of the one whom he did not know. "I am Yhevvak, Grand Liege of Ihelos," the voice said. "And I hold in my hands, Earthman, the Book of the Saints. I have read it, and I have broadcast to all of Thrayx what I have read. A truce delegation has already departed from that planet to meet us here in Space." "But--" the word stuck in his throat, and it was hard to think. "Commander Kriijorl said that you suspected it was the key to our great trouble. You were right. "For it tells of a conference among the leaders of our two worlds many millenia ago; a conference held in secret, because of the nature of its subject--the very people of our worlds themselves. Secret, because of the decision concerning them and their staggering number. Too staggering for either planet any longer to feed. And the record itself was then committed to this single microtape, and itself, kept in secrecy since the day it was recorded. "At first shrouded in deliberate mysticism, it was at length remembered only as the Last Word of the Saints in the sudden wars which so quickly followed its creation, the true cause of which was skillfully falsified to the people of the time, and truly known only to those who made the microtape I hold here. "They were our greatest leaders; in them was invested the responsibility for the welfare and livelihood of our two planets, both materially and spiritually.