gripped the hafts of the long steel
blades at their sides as he spoke the words, but their eyes never left
the commanding figure on the hummock.

"As for food," he continued, "we'll live off the land. You'll find that
most of the animals are edible, but stay away from the plants unless I
give the O.K.

"We have a long way to go, but, by Heaven, I'm going to get us there
alive! Are you with me?"

A hearty cheer rang from the throats of the men. They shouted the
commander's name with enthusiasm.

"All right!" he bellowed. "There is one more thing! Anyone who wants to
stay with the ship can do so; anyone who feels too ill to make it should
consider it his duty to stay behind, because sick men will simply hold
us up and weaken us more than if they'd been left behind. Remember,
we're not going to turn back as a body, and an individual would never
make it alone." He paused.

"Well?"

Not a man moved. The commander grinned--not with humor, but with
satisfaction. "All right, then: let's move out."

V

Of them all, only a handful, including the commander, had any real
knowledge of what lay ahead of them, and that knowledge only pertained
to the periphery of the area the intrepid band of adventurers were
entering. They knew that the aliens possessed a rudimentary
civilization--they did not, at that time, realize they were entering the
outposts of a powerful barbaric empire--an empire almost as
well-organized and well-armed as that of First Century Rome, and, if
anything, even more savage and ruthless.

It was an empire ruled by a single family who called themselves the
Great Nobles; at their head was the Greatest Noble--the Child of the Sun
Himself. It has since been conjectured that the Great Nobles were
mutants in the true sense of the word; a race apart from their subjects.
It is impossible to be absolutely sure at this late date, and the
commander's expedition, lacking any qualified geneticists or genetic
engineers, had no way of determining--and, indeed, no real _interest_ in
determining--whether this was or was not true. None the less, historical
evidence seems to indicate the validity of the hypothesis.

Never before--not even in ancient Egypt--had the historians ever seen a
culture like it. It was an absolute monarchy that would have made any
Medieval king except the most saintly look upon it in awe and envy. The
Russians and the Germans never even approached it. The Japanese tried to
approximate it