The Ptan smiled slowly.
"And so, in fact, I am, Dirk Morris."
"What?"
"A brother many times and many centuries removed. Tell me ... have you never heard of the land of Aztlan?"
"Azt—?" Dirk pondered, shook his head. "No. I'm afraid I have not, Slador. Where was it ... or is it?"
"It was," answered the older man, "an island in the ocean you Earthmen now call the 'Atlantic' The very ocean takes its name from our once-great nation—"
"Aztlan!" ejaculated Morris. "Atlantis! Of course! Now I remember. It is a myth ... a fable ... of an island which sank beneath the waves countless centuries ago! But surely, sir, you don't mean—?"
"I mean," Slador assured him gravely, "that legend is no fable, but veritable truth. Yes, my son, there was such an island ... and we of Nadron were once the rulers of that island, and of your world.
"Its ancientness is not measured in centuries, but in millennia. How long we descendants of the Atlanteans have lived on Nadron, our archives do not tell. Those who fled hither from the holocaust that deluged our former home could not bring with them the impedimenta of a cultured civilization. We had to fight our way upward from semi-barbarism to our present state of living ... and even yet we have not regained all the lost lore of Aztlan."