Seed of the Gods

that's what I'm hearing. It's saying, children, that's all. Just children. But I can feel it drawing me.» Jay was skeptical, but morose enough not to care. Toby was, himself, a bit doubtful, but he'd seen the first racial memories back there while monitoring Jay's machine and he knew that there was something very different about this Ortonian girl. An anthropological expedition was camped in tents in the midst of a vast wasteland through which ran deep ruts of erosion, exposing the age-old remains of primitive man. «It doesn't matter,» Sooly said forcefully, hearing the voice very loudly now. «They'll know soon.» Dusty, sweating workers and tired, aging scientists, concerned at that moment with digging at the bones of the earth, itself, stopped their work, staring at the scout as it lowered, settled to raise puffs of dust. «We're here,» Sooly said to the voice. She waited. There was nothing. Around them the bare rocks were exposed and a white man in khaki was moving hesitantly toward them, several hundred yards off. «We're here, damn it,» Sooly said desperately. «We're here.» It was not in words. It flowed into her brain in a quick burst and she knew. «Did you hear it?» she asked. Toby shook his head. She listened. The message was repeated. There was no more. It was cryptic and she was furious with disappointment. Was that all? The message was repeated. «We can go now, Toby,» she said sadly. The scout blinked up, fading before the startled eyes of the scientists and the black workers. «They put them here because they were going away,» Sooly said. «And they left the thing there under the earth and I don't think they ever, really, expected anyone to hear it.» «I think it's time you explained,» Toby said. «Toby, on the Wasted Worlds is there a huge city?» «The Planet of Cities,» Toby said, wondering where it was all going to lead. «They want us to go there,» Sooly said. «To a high tower on a mountain top, a tower built in the shape of a five pointed star.» «There's nothing there,» Jay said. «It's deserted, all clues to the identity of those who built it erased.» «Tell me the whole message,» Toby said. «It wasn't in words,» she admitted. «It was a feeling. They called us children and there was a hint of sadness and then this picture of the tower in the shape of a star and I knew that they wouldn't be there, because I saw it empty and deserted, but they want us to go there. I had a feeling that it was part of some kind of test.» «The Ortonian girl has lost her reason,» Jay said. «Toby, can this ship get us there?» «Oh, yes.» He nodded. «We have synthetic rations for six months. We draw power from the stars. We can go anywhere in the Galaxy where expo ships have put out beacons.» «Let's go, then,» Sooly begged. «What have we got to lose?» «Our lives if we get on a beacon with an Ankani ship,» Jay said. «This feeling you had,» Toby asked. «Did you have the impression that those who left the message also built the Planet of Cities?» «Yes.» Toby looked at Jay. «If we could crack that nut, we'd be home free.» Home. Sooly felt as if something had torn loose inside her. Her parents would be frantic by now. It was purely incredible to think that she was about to embark on a trip into the stars, at distances which were unthinkable to her. It was even more incredible to think that she, Sooly, was to be the instrument in a vast change in the miserable history of mankind. For there was an implied promise in that feeling, that unspoken message sent into her brain from a shining, small object buried far under the earth by someone, someone who had helped people the earth, bringing a sea of humanoid beings to the old plains and valleys at a time when the people were not much more than animals. There was a promise and it was