sate the shaggy headed warriors who
had stormed her gates this day. The stairway to Asti's Temple was plain
enough to see and there would be those to essay the steep climb hoping
to find a treasure which did not exist. For Asti was an austere God,
delighting in plain walls and bare altars. His last priest had lain in
the grave niches these three years, there would be none to hold that
gate against intruders.

Varta passed between tall, uncarved pillars, Lur padding beside her, his
spine mane erect, the talons on his forefeet clicking on the stone in
steady rhythm. So they came into the innermost shrine of Asti and there
Varta made graceful obeisance to the great cowled and robed figure which
sat enthroned, its hidden eyes focused upon its own outstretched hand.

And above the flattened palm of that wide hand hung suspended in space
the round orange-red sun ball which was twin to the sun that lighted
Erb. Around the miniature sun swung in their orbits the four worlds of
the system, each obeying the laws of space, even as did the planets they
represented.

"Memphir has fallen," Varta's voice sounded rusty in her own ears. She
had spoken so seldom during the last lonely months. "Evil has risen to
overwhelm our world, even as it was prophesied in Your Revelations, O,
Ruler of Worlds and Maker of Destiny. Therefore, obeying the order given
of old, I would depart from this, Thy house. Suffer me now to fulfill
the Law--"

Three times she prostrated her slim body on the stones at the foot of
Asti's judgment chair. Then she arose and, with the confidence of a
child in its father, she laid her hand palm upward upon the outstretched
hand of Asti. Beneath her flesh the stone was not cold and hard, but
seemed to have an inner heat, even as might a human hand. For a long
moment she stood so and then she raised her hand slowly, carefully, as
if within its slight hollow she cupped something precious.

[Illustration]

And, as she drew her hand away from the grasp of Asti, the tiny sun and
its planets followed, spinning now above her palm as they had above the
statue's. But out of the cowled figure some virtue had departed with the
going of the miniature solar system; it was now but a carving of stone.
And Varta did not look at it again as she passed behind its bulk to seek
a certain place in the temple wall, known to her from much reading of
the old records.

Having found the stone she sought, she moved her hand in a certain
pa