niverse they could not defy together....

* * * * *

There was a flicker of black movement and a young messenger prowler came
running from the direction of the council hall, a speckle-faced mocker
clinging to its back. It leaped up on the wall beside him and the
mocker, one that had been trained to remember and repeat messages
verbatim, took a breath so deep that its cheeks bulged out. It spoke, in
a quick rush like a child that is afraid it might forget some of the
words:

"You will please come to the council hall to lead the discussion
regarding the last preparations for the meeting with the Gerns. The
transmitter is completed."

* * * * *

The lathe was torn down the next day and the smelter began to roar with
its forced draft. Excitement and anticipation ran through the town like
a fever. It would take perhaps twenty days to build the generator,
working day and night so that not an hour of time would be lost, forty
days for the signal to reach Athena, and forty days for the Gern cruiser
to reach Ragnarok----

In one hundred days the Gerns would be there!

The men who would engage in the fight for the cruiser quit trimming
their beards. Later, when it was time for the Gerns to appear, they
would discard their woolen garments for ones of goat skin. The Gerns
would regard them as primitive inferiors at best and it might be of
advantage to heighten the impression. It would make the awakening of the
Gerns a little more shocking.

An underground passage, leading from the town to the concealment of the
woods in the distance, had long ago been dug. Through it the women and
children would go when the Gerns arrived.

There was a level area of ground, just beyond the south wall of town,
where the cruiser would be almost certain to land. The town had been
built with that thought in mind. Woods were not far from both sides of
the landing site and unicorn corrals were hidden in them. From the
corrals would come the rear flanking attack against the Gerns.

The prowlers, of course, would be scattered among all the forces.

* * * * *

The generator was completed and installed on the nineteenth night.
Charley Craig, a giant of a man whose red beard gave him a genially
murderous appearance, opened the valve of the water pipe. The new wooden
turbine stirred and belts and pulleys began to spin. The generator
hummed, the needles of