It had graceful spires and round, lovely dwellings. Giant ships rested beside white, sparkling wharves. People went back and forth clad in light, airy garments. There was an air of glowing contentment. Stasor said, "This is their golden age. It will last a long time. Soon they will colonize other planets near them. In the end--some million years from now--these people will rule almost all the known universes. And yet, compared to ours, their science is just a crawling child." * * * * * Angus felt a touch of jealousy. "Why should they rule the worlds? We people of Karr...." "Wait, not yet. I want to show you this world three hundred years ago." He touched a lever. The world below them grew away, shot backward and out into space. Angus cried out in amazement. "It's receding away from us." "I'm going back in time. Remember, this is an expanding universe. It's come a long ways in the past three centuries, going toward the fixed star, Vega. We have to follow it." This time, there was no lovely world. There was only blackened earth, charred and scorched. Great humps of steel stuck up from the ground like the fire-blackened ribs of some giant fallen in swamp-muck. From the west came seven thin, lean shapes, speeding through the air. From the blackened ground came thinner, smaller shapes to intercept them. The small shapes were like wasps in their darting and their speed. The big shapes never had a chance. They went down in masses of red flame, spinning. Stasor announced, "This is their Last War. It is to go on ten more years. The seven shapes you saw were bombers loaded to their wings with atomic bombs. The smaller ships were fighters, their armaments mounted with fission-guns, an invention of an American scientist." "Ten more years!" flinched Angus. "There's only blackened ground for them to live on." "They live underground," explained Stasor. Angus mused, "There's such a sharp difference between this world and what it's to be like three hundred years from this time." "The American who invented the fission gun," explained Stasor, "will lead their world to that pinnacle. He is going to organize the remnants of the civilization left after the last war, compel interracial wedlock and births. The biological result of that will be, naturally, a new and different race in the course of the years. It is that race that will go out from Earth to the stars." Angus regarded Stasor thoughtfully. "You're thinking that what the American did with his people, I can do with mine." The old man shrugged. He reached out and twisted the dials. He murmured, "Karr fights a war just as deadly as the one you see below. There's a difference. Instead of death, Karr's enemies deal it stagnation and degeneration." "If I could get the Diktor to give the Hierarch's sciences to the people," Angus mused.