Saxon Bort, a lieutenant of Renzi's, assumed command of the leader's forces and organized the tight dictatorship of the Company of Pax.
Learning, unless one was a privileged "Peaceman," became suspect. Society was formed into three classes - the nobility as represented by the Peacemen of various grades, the peasantry on the land, and the work-slaves-descendants of suspected scientists or techneers.
With the stranglehold of Pax firmly established on Terra, old prejudices against different racial and religious origins again developed. All research, invention, and study was proscribed and the planet was fast slipping into an age of total darkness and retreat. Yet it was at this moment in her history that the first galactic flight was made.
SEE ALSO:
Astra: First Colony
Free Scientists
Renzi, Arturo
Terra: Space Flight
1: THE ROUNDUP
DARD NORDIS PAUSED beneath the low-hanging branches of a pine, sheltered for the moment from the worst of the cutting wind. The western sky was striped with color, dusky purple, gold, red almost as sultry as if this were August instead of late November. But for all their splendor the colors were as bleakly chill as the wind whipping his too- thin body through the sleazy rags of clothing.
He shrugged his shoulders, trying to settle more evenly the bundle of firewood which bowed him into an old man. There came a tug at the hide thong serving him as a belt. "Dard-there's an animal watching-over there-"
He stiffened. To Dessie, with her odd kinship for all furred creatures, every animal was a friend. She might now be speaking of a squirrel or-a wolf! He looked down to the smaller, ragged figure beside him and moistened suddenly dry lips.