--woe to the City of Larr! The hour of the fulfilment of the
prophecy is at hand! Woe to Larr, with its walls and towers!"

Closana hurried to her father's side. A moment later the old man had
regained his calm. He greeted them with formalized speech of welcome
full of old phrases, then added:

"Forgive my agitation when you first entered, _hiziren_, but it brought
to mind the doom-filled phrases of what we of Savissa call the Prophecy
of Jeddah-Khana."

"What is that?"

"It is a very old prophecy, carved in an ancient runic script on the
stone walls of one of the vaults under this tower. Tradition says it was
put there by the Old Ones who built this city, and of whose science we
are the unworthy heirs." Rupin-Sang bowed and touched his forehead as he
mentioned the Old Ones. "The Prophecy states that the day will come when
a red-skinned man and a dark-haired woman and a ruddy, bearded giant
will come together to the city from afar, and that within a month
thereafter the Golden City of Larr will crumble and return to the dust."

"But surely you don't take such old legends seriously!" Gerry said. The
old man smiled.

"My head tells me not to, but superstition is strong in we of Savissa.
However--I can take comfort from the fact that the old legend also
prophecies a re-birth for Savissa after the great catastrophe. But
enough of this talk of portents and legends! I give you welcome to
Savissa, and to the city of Larr. Also, I thank you for rescuing my
youngest daughter from the Scaly Raiders. Whence come ye?"

Gerry sketched in hasty phrases the outline of present conditions on
Earth and Mars, and told of their trip through space to Venus in the
_Viking_. Rupin-Sang nodded without showing any particular surprise.

"And so that's the story," Gerry concluded. "We're curious about some of
your conditions here. The women warriors, for instance...."

"It was not always so in the land of Savissa," Rupin-Sang said with a
faint smile. "In the days of the Old Ones there was a natural balance of
the sexes. But, as the slow centuries passed, the birth rate gradually
changed. Now one child in five thousand born in Savissa is a male. The
few men we do have are needed for certain administrative and scientific
work, particularly the supervision of the alta-radium mines in the
mountains from which we get the raw material for the alta-ray tubes that
are our greatest protection against invasion."

"I saw the tubes on the walls,"