The smoke was a great cloud, and a mirror that hovered showed him the orange burning when he maneuvered it at the proper angle.

It blazed.

His shields absorbed this.

It burned; it was radioactive.

His shields absorbed this too.

There had been a time when he had actually paid attention to it.

He stared upward, and the Earth's dead moon in quarterphase was there before his eyes.

For three, ten seconds, he waited.

Then came the ship, and he sighed.

_My brother is hurting_, said Shind. _Will you give him more medicine now?_

_Yes_.

_I saw this thing long ago. Beware_.

Before moving to the laboratory, Malacar stared down at the thing which had once been New York City's heart. Long gray vines had whipped their ways around the bases of killed buildings, climbed high. Their leaves were coarse, long, rustling. The smoke blackened them, withered them. Still they grew. He could actually see the movement. No human being could live in those canyons of masonry they wound. For no special reason, he pressed a button and a low-yield atomic missile destroyed a building miles away.

_I will have to use karanin on your brother. It will impair his respiratory functions a bit_.

_It will do more good, will it not? Over-all?_

_Yes_.

_Then we must_.

_Go get him. Take him to the laboratory_.

_Yes_.

He looked out one more time, out across his kingdom and the patches of its ocean that showed through smoke. Then he departed the high deck.

The winds that swirled about the world had deposited their rubbish as he had watched. As always. The only human inhabitant of the place, he was neither especially paternal nor antagonistic about the view.

The drop-tube took him to the lower level of his citadel. To test them, he broke three alarm circuits as he moved along a corridor. Entering the laboratory, he saw Shind's brother Tuv waiting.