resistlessly into
the fray. He was Grand Champion Patroclus, working at his trade; the
hard-learned trade which he knew so well. No Praetorian or ordinary
soldier could stand before him save momentarily. He did not have all of
his Thracian armor, but he had enough. Man after man faced him, and man
after man died.

And Nero, sitting at ease with a beautiful boy at his right and a
beautiful harlot at his left, gazed appreciatively through his emerald
lens at the flaming torches; the while, with a very small fraction of
his Eddorian mind, he mused upon the matter of Patroclus and Tigellinus.

Should he let the Thracian kill the Commander of his Guard? Or not? It
didn't really matter, one way or the other. In fact, nothing about this
whole foul planet--this ultra-microscopic, if offensive, speck of cosmic
dust in the Eddorian Scheme of Things--really mattered at all. It would
be mildly amusing to watch the gladiator consummate his vengeance by
carving the Roman to bits. But, on the other hand, there was such a
thing as pride of workmanship. Viewed in that light, the Thracian could
not kill Tigellinus, because that bit of corruption had a few more jobs
to do. He must descend lower and lower into unspeakable depravity,
finally to cut his own throat with a razor. Although Patroclus would not
know it--it was better technique not to let him know it--the Thracian's
proposed vengeance would have been futility itself compared with that
which the luckless Roman was to wreak on himself.

Wherefore a shrewdly-placed blow knocked the helmet from Patroclus' head
and a mace crashed down, spattering his brains abroad.

* * * * *

Thus ended the last significant attempt to save the civilization of
Rome; in a fiasco so complete that even such meticulous historians as
Tacitus and Suetonius mention it merely as a minor disturbance of Nero's
garden party.

* * * * *

_The planet Tellus circled its sun some twenty hundred times. Sixty-odd
generations of men were born and died, but that was not enough. The
Arisian program of genetics required more. Therefore the Elders, after
due deliberation, agreed that that Civilization, too, must be allowed to
fall. And Gharlane of Eddore, recalled to duty from the middle of a
much-too-short vacation, found things in very bad shape indeed and went
busily to work setting them to rights. He had slain one fellow-member of
the Innermost Circl