no more lands to conquer._

CHAPTER I

_Sarka_

In his laboratory atop the highest peak in the venerable Himalayas,
lived Sarka, conceded by the world to be its greatest scientist, despite
his youth. His grandfather, who had watched the passing of eighteen
centuries, had discovered the Secret of Life and thoughtlessly, in the
light of later developments, broadcast his discovery to the world. The
genius of this man, who was also called Sarka, had been passed on to his
son, Sarka the Second, and by him in even greater degree to Sarka the
Third ... called merely Sarka for the purposes of this history.

Had Sarka lived in the days before the discovery of the Secret of Life,
people of that day would have judged him a young man of twenty. His real
age was four centuries.

Behind him as he sat moodily staring at the gigantic Revolving Beryl
stood a woman of most striking appearance. Her name was Jaska, and
according to ideas of the Days Before the Discovery, she seemed a trifle
younger than Sarka. Her hand, unadorned by jewelry of any kind, rested
on Sarka's shoulder as he studied the Revolving Beryl, while her eyes,
whose lashes, matching her raven hair, were like the wings of tiny
blackbirds, noted afresh the wonder of this man.

"What is to be done?" she asked him at last, and her voice was like
music there in the room where science performed its miracles for Sarka.

* * * * *

Wearily Sarka turned to face her, and she was struck anew, as she had
been down the years since she had known this man, every time their
glances met, at the mighty curve of his brow, which rendered
insignificant his mouth, his delicate nose of the twitching nostrils,
the well-deep eyes of him.

"Something must be done," he said gloomily, "and that soon! For, unless
the children of men are provided with some manner of territorial
expansion, they will destroy one another, only the strongest will
survive, and we shall return to the days when the waters covered the
earth, and monstrous creatures bellowed from the primeval slime!"

"You are working on something?" she asked softly.

For a moment he did not answer. While she waited, Jaska peered into the
depths of the Revolving Beryl, which represented the earth. It was fifty
feet in diameter, and in its curved surface and entrancing depths was
mirrored, in this latest development of teleview, all the earth and the
doings of its people. But Jaska scarcely