eply
lined as to hang in folds around the sunken eyes. The mouth was but a
toothless maw and the body so shrunken as to seem incapable of
clinging to life. The voice was a harsh whisper.

"Thank God you have come. I am dying. The opening of the gate took all
my remaining strength."

"You have been waiting for me?"

"I have been waiting out the years--striving to keep life in my body
until the moment of destiny. I wanted to see _him_. I wanted to be
there when the door to his resting place opens and he comes forth to
right the terrible wrongs that have been done our people."

The strength of the ancient one was ebbing fast. The words he spoke
had been an effort. The kneeling man said, "I don't understand all
this."

"That matters not. It is important only that you keep the bargain made
long ago with your sire, and that you are here. Someone must be with
_him_ at the awakening."

The newcomer again touched the book in his pocket. "I came because our
word had been given--"

The dying man picked feebly at his sleeve. "Please! You must go below!
The great clock has measured the years. Soon it tolls the moment. Soon
a thundering on the Plains of Ofrid will herald the new age--the
Fighting Age--and a new day will dawn."

While the visitor held his frail shoulders, the dying man gasped and
said, "Hasten! Hurry to the vault below! Would that I could go with
you, but that is not to be."

And then the visitor realized he was holding a corpse in his arms. He
laid it gently down and did as he had been directed to do.

CHAPTER II

_The Great Clock of Tarth_

The Plains of Ofrid on the planet Tarth stretched flat and monotonous
as far as the eye could reach, a gently waving ocean of soft,
knee-high grass where herds of wild stads grazed and bright-hued birds
vied in brilliance with the flaming sun.

From the dark Abarian Forests to the Ice Fields of Nadia, the plain
stretched unbroken except for the tall, gray tower in its exact center
and it was toward this tower that various groups of Tarthans were now
moving.

Every nation on the planet was represented in greater or lesser
number. The slim, erect Nadians in their flat-bottomed air cars that
could hang motionless in space or skim the surface of the planet at a
thousand jeks an hour. The grim-faced Abarians, tall and finely
muscled on their powerful stads, their jeweled uniforms flashing back
the glory of the heavens. The Utalians, those chameleon men of T