t I cannot see how men could live in a
land never reached by the sun. There would be no heat, no vegetation.
Is that not so?"

"Would that it were!" replied the Master of the Council, bitterly.
"What you say would be indeed the truth, were it not for the great
river and seas of our sunny Antri, which bear their heated waters to
this dark portion of our world, and make it habitable.

"And as for this danger, there is little to be said. At some time, men
of our country, men who fish, or venture upon the water in commerce,
have been borne, all unwillingly, across the shadowy twilight zone and
into the land of darkness. They did not come back, but they were found
there and despoiled of their menores.

"Somehow, these creatures who dwell in darkness determined the use of
the menore, and now that they have resolved that they shall rule all
this sphere, they have been able to make their threat clear to us.
Perhaps"--and Bori Tulber smiled faintly and terribly--"you would like
to have that message direct from its bearer?"

* * * * *

"Is that possible, sir?" I asked eagerly, glancing around the room.
"How--"

"Come with me," said the Master of the Council gently. "Alone--for too
many near him excites this terrible messenger. You have your menore?"

"No. I had not thought there would be need of it." The menores of
those days, it should be remembered, were heavy, cumbersome circlets
that were worn upon the head like a sort of crown, and one did not go
so equipped unless in real need of the device. To-day, of course, your
menores are but jeweled trinkets that convey thought a score of times
more effectively, and weigh but a tenth as much.

"It is a lack easily remedied." Bori Tulber excused himself with a
little bow and hurried out into the great council chamber, to appear
again in a moment with a menore in either hand.

"Now, if your companions and mine will excuse us for a moment...." He
smiled around the seated group apologetically. There was a murmur of
assent, and the old man opened a door in the other side of the room.

"It is not far," he said. "I will go first, and show you the way."

* * * * *

He led me quickly down a long, narrow corridor to a pair of steep
stairs that circled far down into the very foundation of the building.
The walls of the corridor and the stairs were without windows, but
were as bright as noonday from the ethon tubes which