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mist, as we have done with cloud banks when we felt a need for additional rain.”
    “Yes?” Salustra impatiently looked from one minister to the other.
    Hammu was a stocky man, with a round face, dull brown eyes, and a truculent look. He was known as a great physicist. “It is easy to suggest, Majesty, but suggestions do not move the heavens.”
    The Empress gave him an imperious look. “What have you done, sir?”
    “These clouds are different from any others, Majesty. We have stocked them with all types of water-producing chemicals, without the slightest effect. The mist only seems to get thicker, hanging lower in the atmosphere.” He paused for a moment, and his eyes moved slowly around the table. His face was glum and his shoulders sagged. “The birds have all disappeared from the skies of Lamora, as if they had some foreknowledge of disaster.”
    Nothing he said could have more oppressed the minds of the assembled dignitaries, susceptible as they were to the astrologers’ repeated portents of catastrophe.
    But Salustra was quick to counteract Hammu’s bombshell. “Bah,” she exclaimed. “They were no doubt driven off by the noxious fumes; this mist reeks of sulfur.”
    Her eyes now rested on her supreme councillor, Mahius. “What sayest thou, dear friend, to this gloomy talk?”
    Only Mahius dared speak his mind, not only because he was closest to the Empress but because two lifetimes had wearied him and he no longer aspired to the greatest reward a grateful Atlantis could conceive—the rejuvenation chamber. For this reason, too, Salustra, grown cynical with rule, knew she could count on him for an honest opinion. He had nothing to gain or lose.
    “What sayest thou?” she repeated, as he remained rapt in thought.
    He spoke slowly, with a solemn mien. “Majesty, just as Fribian cannot move the sun, Hammu cannot alter the atmosphere, and Timeus—” his head nodded toward the Minister of Transport “—cannot move the unmovable.”
    Her head bridled impatiently. “Then are we to sit around and do nothing, while the people starve and Signar moves in on fossil-fueled vessels and takes over all we have built over the centuries?”
    There was the trace of a smile on Mahius’ gray lips. “No, Majesty, but we can learn from the barbarian. We have our network of canals and fleets of smaller barges, some fitted for nuclear energy, others for the sun’s rays. We can fit them overnight with sails and oars, and let them sweep over the waterways in the same way that our ancestors did centuries before. Meanwhile, we could scour the museums for the internal-combustion engines that our forefathers once used, and perhaps find fuel for them in the ground.” He paused, as he saw her frown. “It would be a temporary expedient, Majesty, to move foods, perishable for lack of refrigeration, and to feed an empire, while your ministers apply themselves to this crisis.”
    With her knack for instant decisions, the Empress’ head inclined. “Timeus, go to, and have these ships moving before daybreak.”
    Timeus had a sailor’s keen eye. Small craft were his hobby. His eyes gleamed at these instructions. “It shall be done, Majesty, Lamora shall not starve. But I will need help.”
    He turned to the Minister for National Preservation, who until now had maintained an aloof, somewhat disdainful attitude. “I will need Sabian’s fullest cooperation for the required manpower.”
    The Empress’ eyes focused on a short man, with a beefy face, who appeared vastly overdressed for so somber an occasion. “And what say you, Sabian?”
    Sabian hesitated. “It will take time, Majesty, to collect so huge a force, considering the breakdown in the rapid-transit and communication systems.”
    The Empress’ eyes blazed. “Dolt,” she exploded. “Were these systems functioning would we be here at all, but rather out in the garden listening to the birds, which also are inoperative?”
    The Minister for National Preservation