Gorla shook his head sadly. "Foolish friend!" Then his voice took on the unmistakable tone of command. "In the name of, and by the authority of the Temple, I demand that you abandon your projected attack on the Tellurian camp." Telis threw back his head and laughed. "Demand, is it? I know of no plan to attack the foreigners, friend Priest, now or in the future! Now kindly step aside. I cannot make the Laurr of Laurr wait on me while I argue senseless points with you...." Gorla sounded defeated. "Then you refuse?" Telis frowned at his friend. "Of course, I refuse! And you may carry that message back to Dorliss ... if there _is_ such a place!" With that he turned away, but not before Gorla laid his hand on Telis' arm and said: "Then forgive me, old friend...." Telis wondered at that. Forgive? Forgive what? Then other matters forced that question from his mind. So the Temple knew of the Maldia's plan to massacre the aliens. To what extent, he wondered, would the Temple go in striving for its own inscrutable purpose to save the Tellurian scientists? And why? In spite of himself, Telis could not suppress a shudder, for the Temple was powerful ... perhaps the most powerful thing remaining on the desiccated planet of Laurr. The ancient order of the Temple Priests dated to far before the Ten Water Wars that had so devastated the globe with their atomic fury. Its beginnings were lost in the dim mists of antiquity, even antedating the building of the waterways. The membership was perhaps the one body selected for any purpose on Laurr without consideration of family or background, and this fact accounted for the fierce loyalty of such able young Commoners as Gorla. The long wars and the struggle for survival had destroyed much of the ancient science, and what remained lay within the jurisdiction of the Temple. As it so often happens in times of great stress, science on the world of Laurr had taken on the vestments of religion in order to survive. A benevolent, scientific hierarchy, the Priests of the Seven Cycles spent their cloistered hours delving into the great knowledge of the ancients, seeking the answers to riddles solved long ago and forgotten in the fratricidal wars that were the direct result of the dwindling water supply. Ostensibly, the Temple conducted the world-wide worship of the Water Goddess, principal deity in the Laurrian Pantheon, but actually the Priests were scientists striving frantically to salvage what little they could from the wreckage of the ancient civilization on a doomed and quarrelsome planet. * * * * *