Four thousand years have passed since sarnians conquered Earth. The only one of the conquerors, the Supreme Ruler Mother of the Sarnes, remembers the times of fierce battles—and she is also the only one who sees that the earthlings have changed greatly since then: they have mastered telepathy and are once again worthy opponents of the sarnians. But what worries the Ruler the most is a person named Ezir… High-stakes science fiction by John Campbell—the writer and publisher, the father of the “Golden Age” of American science fiction.