ere wiped out,
leaving only hundreds of survivors out of millions. You, no doubt, think
that such tales are products of ignorant and barbaric imagination, but I
assure you, they are literally true. It was not the blast-effect of a
few bombs which created such holocausts, but the radiations released by
the bombs. And those who survived to carry on the race were men and
women whose systems resisted the radiations, and they transmitted to
their progeny that power of resistance. In many cases, their children
were mutants--not monsters, although there were many of them, too, which
did not survive--but humans who were immune to radioactivity."

"An interesting theory, Kradzy Zago," the soldier commented. "And one
which conforms both to what we know of atomic energy and to the ancient
legends. Then you would say that those radiations are still deadly--to
the non-immune?"

"Exactly. And Hradzka, his body emitting those radiations, has returned
to the First Century of the Atomic Era--to a world without immunity."

General Zarvas' smile vanished. "Man!" he cried in horror. "You have
loosed a carrier of death among those innocent people of the past!"

Kradzy Zago nodded. "That is true. I estimate that Hradzka will probably
cause the death of a hundred or so people, before he is dealt with. But
dealt with he will be. Tell me, General; if a man should appear now, out
of nowhere, spreading a strange and horrible plague wherever he went,
what would you do?"

"Why, I'd hunt him down and kill him," General Zarvas replied. "Not for
anything he did, but for the menace he was. And then, I'd cover his body
with a mass of concrete bigger than this palace."

"Precisely." Kradzy Zago smiled. "And the military commanders and
political leaders of the First Century were no less ruthless or
efficient than you. You know how atomic energy was first used? There was
an ancient nation, upon the ruins of whose cities we have built our own,
which was famed for its idealistic humanitarianism. Yet that nation,
treacherously attacked, created the first atomic bombs in self defense,
and used them. It is among the people of that nation that Hradzka has
emerged."

"But would they recognize him as the cause of the calamity he brings
among them?"

"Of course. He will emerge at the time when atomic energy is first being
used. They will have detectors for the Deadly Radiations--detectors we
know nothing of, today, for a detection instrument must be free f