ilence of his laboratory. "My grandfather was right! Dalis was
wrong! Science should be the science of Life, not of Death! Yet whither
shall we go! Where now shall we find places for our people who are daily
being born in myriads, to live, and love and flourish?"

But there was no answer. Only the humming of the perpetually revolving
Beryl, which showed to the sad eyes of Sarka that the people of his
beloved earth were rushing onward to Chaos, unless....

"If only I could be sure about Jaska!" he moaned. "If only my courage
were as great as that of which I stand in need! For if I fail, even
Dalis, had he succeeded with that scheme of his in grandfather's time,
would be less a monster, less a criminal!"

CHAPTER III

_The Spokesmen of the Gens_

For a long moment Sarka looked broodingly out across the world beyond
the metalized glass which formed the curving dome of his laboratory
roof. There was little that could be seen, for always the mighty, cold
winds, ruffed with flurries of snow and particles of ice, swept over
this artificial roof of the world. Here and there huge portions of the
area within the range of his normal vision were swept clear and clean of
snow and ice--and looked bluely, bitterly cold and hostile.

Without the Sarka-Belts, people who ventured forth from their hives
would instantly freeze to the consistency of marble in those winds and
storms. For the people of Earth had built their monster habitation
toward the stars until they reached up into the altitude of perpetual
cold.

Only under that gleaming roof was there warmth. Many of the men, and
women, and children who had lost in the now century-old fight for
survival had merely been tossed out of the hives. A painless, swift
death--but each death, in a world so highly specialized that each grown
person fitted into his niche naturally and easily, was a distinct loss,
not much, perhaps, but enough for the loss to be felt.

* * * * *

Sarka, closing his eyes for a moment as though to shut out a horror
which in his mind he could visualize, turned back to the Revolving
Beryl, in which he kept in constant touch with all parts of the world at
will.

"It _must_ be done!" he muttered. "I must take action. It means the loss
of thousands, perhaps millions of lives, in such a war as the mind of
man has not hitherto conceived; but for a Cause greater than any which
has ever hitherto been an excuse for armed conflict. B