Five millenniums have passed since the loathsome Termans were eliminated from the world ofDiskra.... But what of the other planets?
Braanol stirred, throbbed sluggishly once, then lay quiescentas his mental self surged up from the deeps of non-entity.And gradually he came to know that someone had entered theroom. His room, far beneath the city.
Now he could feel the vibra-currents through the liquids ofthe huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold aeons.It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there,enjoying to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewedthought-life-force set his every convolution to pulsing.
"To be once more aware! O gloriously aware!" thethought came fierce and vibrant. "Once more they havewakened me—but how long has it been?" Then curiously:"And what can they want this time?"
The huge brain was alert now, with a supernal sense ofkeening. Tentatively he sent out a thought-potential thatencompassed the room.
"They are afraid!" he sensed. "Two have entered here,and they are afraid of me. I shall remedy that!"
Braanol lowered his thought-potential to one-eighth of onemagnitude, and felt his mind contact theirs. "Approach, mychildren," he said kindly. "You have nothing to fear fromme! I take it you are the imperial messengers sent by herSupreme Magnificence, the Empress Alaazar?"
He felt the fright slip from their minds. But they werestartled.
"The Empress Uldulla reigns now, fourth in the Royalline," came the thought. "Empress Alaazar died long ago!"
"I am truly grieved!" Braanol flashed to them. "Alaazar—mayshe rest in peace—did not neglect me! How wellI remember her interest in the stories I could tell, stories ofthe Diskra of old when we sent men out to glorious adventureson the other planets! Aye! Five millenniums ago itwas that we achieved space travel. In those days—"
Braanol ceased in his reminiscences, aware that these twowere trying to get their thoughts through to him.
"That is why we have come! The Empress Uldulla, too,wishes a story. The story of the first space-flight from Diskra,and the events that brought it about. And of howyou—"
"Aye! Of how I came to be as you see me now! I shallbe delighted, my children, to tell it again. But first, preparethe trans-telector so that it may be recorded faithfully."
Braanol directed them to a machine on the far side of theroom, and instructed them as to its operation. Soon thehundreds of tiny coils were humming, and a maze of tubes fedout of the machine, on which would be recorded Braanol'severy thought. For a moment he paused, gently swaying,pulsing, a huge independent brain suspended in the pale greenliquid. Then he began his story.
Your Supreme Beneficence! When the imperial messengerscame to me, bringing the communication with which youdeigned to address my decrepit solitude, it was like a gloriousray of light come to illumine the deepening darkness of mydeclining years!
It is with trepidation that I set about to fulfill your ExaltedCommand. Five millenniums, aye, even more, have passed,since those who were part of that segment of history intowhich you inquire, have become but drifting dust. Onlywithin the feeble memory of your humblest servant is thereany record of it.
Five millenniums! Aye! That was truly the golden periodof our beloved Diskra—not that our period under YourSerene Effulgence is not golden indeed! But in that day allDiskra was under the glorious rule of Palladin. His city onthe scarlet shores of our central sea was the wonder of usall. Aye! We had a sea then, where there is now