Raiders From the Rings

�We have watched your plants for millennia.�

The creature that spoke was barely three feet tall, with wrinkled gray skin and monstrous eyes . . .

�Yours is a war of children. Only children would slaughter each other out of ignorance and fear. Only children would fail again and again to learn the lessons of their foolishness.�

It was true. The underground people of Earth were united in terror and desperation against what they considered a frightful threat from the skies. They had sent a mighty armada into space, rushing in lethal orbit toward Mars. The Spacers - still really Earthmen themselves - were poised for the counter-blow. The great fleet at Asteroid Central had sufficient warheads to reduce earth to a cinder.

�But we also know the greatness of your spirit, the precious spark which we cannont allow you to extinguish.�

Now Ben Trefon understood that in the Black Belt of Power bequeathed to him by his father rested the final hope of the human...