dside to watch the patrol of
Reptile Men go by.

"But they're not scaly!" Gerry exclaimed. Closana shook her head.

"No. They are of the Green Men of Giri. Once they held this land while
the Scaly Ones dwelt in the marshes of Vaaka farther west, but the Scaly
Ones have now been masters of this place for many generations."

The Green Men, Gerry noticed, looked like ordinary Earthlings except for
a slight greenish cast to their skin. Probably, like the Golden Amazons,
they were also descended from the Old Ones who had come from Mars so
long ago. The ragged and mud-stained farmer gave Toll a perfunctory
salute, and then leaned on his hoe to watch the column pass by.

The warriors of Toll swaggered along the road with the insolent
assurance of men who know themselves masters of all around them. The
farmer's green face was carefully expressionless, but there was a gleam
in his eyes that spoke of no great liking for his scaly masters. When
his glance lingered on Gerry's for an instant, the Earth-man read a
definite sympathy in it.

They camped that night in a clearing beside a small stream. One of the
guards shot a giant ant with his gas-gun, then cracked open the horny
shell with his sword. They cut long strips of the meat and roasted it
over a fire. Though the taste was peculiar the stuff was edible, and
the three prisoners managed to swallow it.

"The condemned man ate a hearty meal!" Angus McTavish said with grim
humor, wiping his fingers on the coarse yellow grass beside him.

Olga had gone on with a faster-moving detachment, and only a dozen Scaly
Ones remained with Toll to guard the three prisoners. Gerry and Closana
sat side by side before the fire, their bare shoulders touching. The
ruddy and flickering glow of the firelight touched Angus' giant frame a
little farther around the circle, and then the scaly skins and long
snouts of the reptile men watching them. Gerry clasped his arms around
his knees.

"Y'know Angus, at the moment we're living as our ancestors must have
lived long generations ago. No ray-tubes or dura-steel armor. No
portable electro-phones. Not even a low-speed rocket car to carry us
along. It must have been this way back in the days when they built that
little old building that's now used for a museum in New York. The Empire
State Building."

"You've got your dates mixed, laddie," McTavish yawned. "The Empire
State was built in the twentieth century, and even the people of those
queer old