“OUR SCIENCE NEED NOT concern itself with crudities like names, barbarian. This gun was made as a song or a poem is made—in the mind of a man who dreams weapons where another man might dream bridges ... and when the gun finds its fruition, tomorrow when Mayron expects no mightier enemy than you, then the beam will sweep that city, and when it stops Mayron’s city will be a tomb for empty skins. And Man will build another First City, and those who fled shall have a place again, and—”
“Who built—who dreamed—this piece of ironmongery?” Greaves growled. “Who was the poet—you?”
“Yes! Why not? Do you think because I am an old man—”
“A heedlessly spiteful one who hasn’t stopped to think.”
“Stopped to think! Look!” Vigil seized the torch at the doorway and lifted it high. “Did you think I wasn’
