'I don't want to get into geographical disputes,' Hfathon said. 'Most of those we brought back to the mother ship were sick with disease. We cured them and then learned their languages before we gave them the choice of going back or staying with the ship.

'One of the persons was from the continent you call Africa, in an area not too far from Khem, or Aegyptos in Greek; he was a Hebrew named Mattathias or Matthias for short. He was the disciple of the Messiah, the one chosen by lot to succeed Yehudhah. In Greek, loudas Iskariotes, the apostle who betrayed the Messiah.'

'You're talking about Matthias and Judas-Iscariot!' Orme said in English, incredulous.

The Krsh ignored his outburst. He pressed a small device in his hand, and inside the huge set on the wall appeared a small bearded man talking to two Krsh in a small room.

'What language is he speaking?' Orme whispered to Bronski.

'I think it's Aramaic.'

'That is Matthias,' Hfathon said.

He paused. 'He was the thirteenth apostle, and he knew Jesus well before he was crucified. He walked and talked and ate with him here.'

Orme wanted to ask him to explain just what he meant by his last remark - 'ate with him here' - but Hfathon was talking about the sudden appearance of the Sons of Darkness.

'Our detectors picked them up as they came from behind the planet you call Jupiter. We had three choices, hide, fight, or run. We could have concealed the ship beneath the surface 'of an ocean, or we could have escaped from the system readily, since we could outrun them. But we did not know what they would do to Earth. From what we'd seen, they were ruthless and savage. They had a high degree of technological civilisation, but that does not mean an equally high ethical standard.

'What if they would destroy Earth as they had the fourth planet in their system? Or perhaps they might enslave the Earthmen. Since we were the ones responsible for their being here, we had a duty to protect Earth. Our policy was to interfere as little as possible in the development of another species, though it might hurt us not to rectify the evil things done there.'

He paused again.

'At least, that was our policy then.'

Orme sat up straight. What did that enigmatic statement mean?

'So we decided to fight.'

Orme said, 'Pardon me, Hfathon, but I just can't restrain myself. You said, "Our policy then." What...?'

'That will be explained later.'

'Okay. But what I also want to know is how you could identify the ships of the "Sons of Darkness", as you call them. Was it their configuration or what?'

'They were shaped like those which had attacked us before. We didn't know, rather, our ancestors, the crew, didn't know how they had managed to follow us. A spaceship doesn't leave spoor. At least, we didn't think so, though perhaps those Sons of Darkness were more advanced than we thought.

'Also, they had to have had Starships when we visited their system, though we hadn't observed any. Anyway...'

The Krsh ship, with the Terrestrial 'guests' still aboard, met the enemy 100,000 miles beyond Mars. The battle was brief and furious. Pieces of the attackers floated towards the sun. But the Krsh had been hard hit. With only one engine operating, it made for Mars and crash-landed. Fortunately, the impact was not serious to the crew and passengers. But the vessel could not be repaired, and the smaller survey ship was ruined.

The Marsnauts watched pictures taken of the flight and the wrecking, and of the measures taken for survival. With the equipment at hand, the Krsh hollowed out of the hard rock a temporary base. From the minerals they made oxygen and food. And as the years went by, they expanded, eventually ending up with the great underground complex.

Orme found this account interesting, but he was more eager to get back to the story of Matthias. He felt awed. The apostle had actually been with these people. And, as Hfathon's holograms showed, he was buried in the rock here within a short drive. The camera had swooped over the cemetery, showing first the gravestones of the early inhabitants. They were inscribed with letters in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Krsh, ideograms in Chinese, and several in what he supposed were Mayan hieroglyphs.

As the camera moved towards the later graves, all the lettering became Hebrew. The stones were of the same size since the law required that. According to the Hebrews, all persons were equal in death, holy and sinful, rich and poor, young and old, men, women, and children.

Bronski translated the inscription.

'Mattathias bar-Hamath. The years in the Hebrew chronology correspond to 2 AD and 149 AD respectively.'

Near the apostle's stone were ten others which Hfathon pointed out.

'These were Matthias's companions, his disciples rather, who were stricken with a disease when we picked them up. They were Libyan Jews whom he had convinced that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. It was Matthias who, with his ten, converted all his pagan human companions. But we Krsh were not yet shown the light. Most of us were agnostics or atheists, though there were some who clung to the religions of their ancestors. We did not interfere when he brought all our humans under the law of Moses, even though, in our ignorance, we could see nothing but senseless brutality in some of their laws.'

Orme could contain himself no longer. Rising to his feet, he shouted, 'And what made you change your hearts?'

'The Messiah himself appeared to us. And he did that which convinced us forever.'

Philemon Zhbeshg Mosheh ben-Yonathan was a young man of thirty-five. He was a bit of a dandy with his violet-dyed sidelocks, his large silver cart-wheel earrings, and his rainbow-striped robe. His elderly relatives thought his apparel scandalous. His ornamented buskins and scarlet toenails caused them to reproach him openly. He listened meekly and silently, but when he had heard them out he went on dressed as before. Like so many young people, twenty-two to fifty, he dressed as he pleased, to be fashionable.

Unlike his contemporaries, however, he was not given to excessive drinking, that is, drinking more than three glasses of wine in a day. Because he was an athlete, he permitted himself only one glass of wine during supper.

Orme, who'd won three Olympic gold medals (100 and 200 metre sprints and the long jump) went down to the central gymnasium to work out. He was, of course, eager to see what kind of athletes 'the Martians were. He expected that 2000 years of life on a planet with a gravity much lighter than Earth's would result in weaker muscles. But he was wrong. The natives ran and jumped and wrestled as if they'd been born on Earth.

Orme was attracted to Philemon by his friendly cheery manner and intrigued by the fact that he was the champion sprinter. He struck up a conversation, limited by his deficiencies in Krsh, and the sixth day after meeting him challenged him. To his surprise and chagrin, Orme was bested by several metres in each event.

'Well, I'm not in top condition,' he said between gasping breaths. 'I need about five months of working out. Besides, I'm not accustomed to running here. Every stride I take is five metres long. Also, I'm past my prime, though I think you'd have beaten me anyway. Thirty-five is very old for a sprinter. For an Earthman, that is. And I'm not used to running with bare feet, either.'

He paused to grin and said, 'Maybe I can think of some more excuses.'

It was then that Philemon told him that he was the same age as he.

'Yes, but I haven't got the age-delaying treatment. Physiologically, you're only about nineteen, I'd bet.'