"The Capitol of the Missouris," Price thought. "And oh God, why did it have to happen to our world?"
He had listened, on the way here, to everything Burr and Twist said. Bit by bit, the jigsaw fragments of information had fallen into place, and a few casual questions had completed the apocalyptic picture.
It had happened long ago in the lost years, the years that Price had been hurled through. As near as he could make out the date had been 1979, sixty years ago.
That had been the year of doom. That had been the year when they had first come from outer space.
The Star Lords. The Vurna, as they called themselves. The accursed star-spawn, as men called them. Their tremendous cruisers had come out of the blue, had poised above the Earth, and then had struck.
Every city, every big town, every atomic power-plant, every arsenal, every important bridge, viaduct, dam and factory. In one week of holocaust, they had been smashed by the remorseless cruisers that went round and round the planet. Millions died, that week. And the Star Lords' cruisers went away.
Quickly, they had returned. This time, not to destroy but to seize. What had been the fat, smiling lands of Illinois and Indiana, they had made their domain. In it, they built their Citadel.
The Citadel was a fortress, a city, above all, a base. The Star Lords contemptuously refrained from attacking the dazed Earth peoples who had been thrown back to near-primitive conditions. To the lords of the Citadel, Earth was only the site of an important base. Or so they said.
Was it any wonder, Price thought, that these men of the Missouris would kill anyone, anything, from the Citadel? Just hearing of it all had kindled his own rage. These men's fathers had lived it, and they were still living it.
He looked down at the wooden town, as he and Burr and Twist went down a trail, and he thought,