At the last a ruined planet, a cosmic plague, spinning through the shuddering heavens; its verdant plains, its murmuring forests, its meadows and its mountains manned only by a countless crew of soulless, mindless dead-alive, their shells illumined with the Dweller’s infernal glory⁠—and flaming over this vampirized Earth like a flare from some hell far, infinitely far, beyond the reach of man’s farthest flung imagining⁠—the Dweller!

Rador jumped to his feet; walked to the whispering globe. He bent over its base; did something with its mechanism; beckoned to us. The globe swam rapidly, faster than ever I had seen it before. A low humming arose, changed into a murmur, and then from it I heard Lugur’s voice clearly.

“It is to be war then?”

There was a chorus of assent⁠—from the Council, I thought.