And, strangely enough, Don did not deviate.
Interlude:
Six thousand years ago, Sargon of Akkad held court on the plains of Assyria by torchlight. Above his head there shone the myriad of stars, placed there to increase his power and glory.
But on one of the stars above called Mars, there were people who knew a mighty civilization and a vast world of science. They flew above the thin air of Mars and they hurled power by energy beam across the face of the planet.
Then they—died. They died, and they left but broken fragments of their once-mighty civilization buried in the shifting, dusty sands of Mars. Long centuries afterwards, man crossed space to find these fragments and wonder.
How or why they died is a matter of conjecture. It is known that iron is the most stable of all known atomic structures besides helium. It is also known that the surface of Mars has its characteristic reddish hue because of the preponderance of iron compounds there. From the few remaining artifacts, it is known that Mars exceeded the present Terran science, which includes atomic power. The inference is that Mars died completely in the horror of atomic war.
This is but reasoning. The facts that are of interest include the finding of a gigantic vacuum tube fastened to a shattered steel tower in the sands between Canalopsis and Lincoln Head, Mars.