Stuart took stock of his clothing. Regular leatheroid spaceman's rig; they'd left him that, anyway. Whoever _they_ were. He couldn't remember anything that had happened after the fifth drink with the tired-eyed man. There was a very faint recollection of running somewhere--seeing unpleasant things--and hearing two oddly unreal voices. But the memories slipped away and vanished as he tried to focus on them. The hell with it. He was on Asgard. And that meant--something rather more unpleasant than death, if the legends were to be believed. A very suitable climax to an unorthodox life, in this era when obedience and law enforcement were the rigid rule. Stuart picked up a heavy branch that might serve as a club. Then, shrugging, he turned westward, striking at random through the forest. No use waiting here till the Watchers came. At least--he could fight, as he had always fought as far back as he could remember. There wasn't much room for fighters any more. Not under the Aesir rule. There were nations and kings and presidents, of course, but they were puppet figures, never daring to disobey any edicts that came from the mystery-shrouded asteroid hanging off the orbit of Mars, the tiny, artificial world that had ruled the System for a thousand years. The Aesir. The inhuman, cryptic beings who--if legend were true--once had been human. Stuart scowled, trying to remember. An--an entropic accelerator, that was it. A device, a method that speeded up evolution tremendously. That had been the start of the tyranny. A machine that could accelerate a man's evolution by a million years-- Some had used that method. Those were the ones who had become the Aesir, creatures so far advanced in the evolutionary scale that they were no longer remotely human. Much was lost in the mists of the past. But Stuart could recall that much--the knowledge that the Aesir had once been human, that they were human no longer, and that for a thousand years they had ruled the System, very terribly, from their forbidden asteroid that they named Asgard--home of the legendary Norse gods. Maybe the tired-eyed man had been an Aesir priest, collecting victims. Certainly no others would have dared to land a ship on Asgard. Stuart swung on, searching the empty skies, and now a queer, unreasoning excitement began to grow within him. At least, before he died, he'd learn what the Aesir were like. It probably wouldn't be pleasant knowledge, but there'd be some satisfaction in it. And there'd be even more satisfaction if he thought he had a chance of smashing a hard fist into the face of one of the Aesir priests--or even-- Hell, why not? He had nothing to lose now. From the moment he had touched Asgard soil, he was damned anyway. But of one thing Stuart was certain; he wouldn't be led like a helpless sheep to the throat-cutting. He wouldn't die without fighting against them.