I


In the west wing of the tower of time, abandoned as it is by the keepers of the clock, lies an ancient key. Not an impressive long steel shaft is this key, but a small volume, a compendium of pages enameled against the ravages of the decades and the centuries.
The book has no title, no preface, no table of contents, nor any title embossed on its black spine, nor even printed pages evenly matched and marching end to end.
What is it, you ask?
That question must hold for another. The other question? What is the tower of time? For there are no towers left on Old Earth, only the rambling farms, the sweep of grass, the ramparts of the west mountains, and a few score towns nestled into their restored places in history. There is only a single shuttle field…without a tower.
This tower of time rears backward into history, not into the dark starred nights that are so cold to one used to the light-strewn nights on planets that once belonged to the Empire. Backward into history, you say? How far?
Far enough. Back to the time when purple landspouts raged the high plains, back to the time when boulders fell like rain, and when the devilkids were the only beings who dared to run the hillocks outside the shambletowns.…
Yes, that far. Back to the days of the captain.…

The Myth of the Rebuilding
Alarde D'Lorina
New Augusta, 4539 N.E.C.

This book consists of the novels Dawn for a Distant Earth, copyright © 1987 by L. E. Modesitt, Jr.,