Then the motors exploded, lifting the tower in shattered fragments, blowing to dust the place that had been one of the Gharrians' strongholds. Flames leaped a mile into the air, fed by the ruptured atomic motors, spreading crimson light like the wave of a rock dropped into a still pond. The concussion passed, and all was still, the column of brilliance still leaping and pulsing into the night.
And watching the flame, his arm tight about the slender shoulders of Lura, was Kimball Trent, the man who had lived five hundred years to save his doomed world. He held her tightly, and the hope in his heart was a singing melody that crept into his mind, tangling his thoughts.
"Call the Elder," he said to grinning Korm. "I have a story to tell of a new home for all of us. And"—his voice grew strong, rang like that of a prophet—"of a weapon we can make that the Gharrians cannot fight."
Then he and Lura stood alone in a night that was a dream and they the dreamers. The first streamers of dawn were coming in the sky, foretelling of the new day that was coming to their world.
[Transcriber's Note: No section V heading in original text.]