The second tower was silver.

It was a tower of giant silver discs piled up, getting smaller as they went, like tall stairs leading to heaven. It looked like a Babylonian temple, a ziggurat, but round, and solid silver.

This time Hastings hollered out loud, and with a whoop, ran off toward the tower for a closer look. Simms looked alarmed, and glanced at Sung-Hoi, but the priest's eyes shone with faint amusement. Hastings looked like a dwarf next to the tower - the first disc was taller than he was. He laughed and ran and laughed, never taking his hand off the smooth side. Finally, Sung-Hoi walked toward the tower, motioning for Simms to follow. When they reached the base, Hastings was there leaning against the disc, grinning.

"Come," said Sung-Hoi. With a graceful leap, like a cat, he was standing on the rim of the first disc. "Come," he said again, and continued upward.

Hastings leapt upward struggled, grunted, hung onto the edge of the huge silver step. "Simms!" he growled. "Give me a hand!"

So Simms stood below and strained his back, pushed up on Hastings's feet until he lay panting on the ledge above. He climbed up fairly easily himself, then helped Hastings again. He counted as they climbed, and at eleven they were on top, standing with the treetops on a silver tower, looking for miles across waves of green sea, rolling in the breeze. He held his breath and didn't let it out for a long time, savoring the beauty of the scene, and the utter strangeness of it. Away to the west he saw the first gold spire poking up out of the forest. A mile, he thought. Maybe two. To the south, he noticed a third, and pointed.

"Are there discs on that one, too?"

"Yes," answered Sung-Hoi.

Simms gazed out at the horizon, thinking. Three golden spires. Towers of silver discs. There was something familiar about it all...

Hastings had been trying to catch his breath, sitting with his back against the golden spike that shot up from the center of the round platform. Now he got up and moved to stand near Sung-Hoi, appraising him with squinted eyes.

"You should have told us," he said.

"You would not have believed us," Sung-Hoi replied.

Simms had to admit that this was true. He remembered the strange messenger who appeared in their office two weeks ago, asking in halting English about their giant cranes and flying machines. When they asked him what kind of job it was, he simply shook his head. "You must come," was all he would say. "You must come and see."

He had paid them in gold.

Now Simms stood on the edge of that impossible tower and stared down through the treetops.

"Perhaps you'd better tell us now," he said quietly.

Sung-Hoi nodded once, folded his hands behind his back. He waited a few moments, deliberating. Then he spoke.

"Long ago," he said, "the Eternal One created the earth and the heavens and the myriad creatures." Simms and Hastings glanced at each other with eyebrows raised, but Sung-Hoi continued, unheeding.

"The earth was new and green, and the golden sun was still young, and the Eternal One did strange works that no man knows. In those days men loved the earth, and they walked in the forests and jungles, and they were not afraid. But they grew in strength and knowledge, and they multiplied and covered the earth, and they learned to kill the forest, and the myriad creatures, and finally themselves."

"So the Eternal One was angered, and he set down three golden spires in the midst of the forest, and he set down upon one of them a great tower of silver rings. And he decreed that the peoples of earth would reign in their foolishness until the tower was moved from one spire to another, and that he would return when the task was completed. Then he turned his face against the world of men, and his great works were never seen again on the earth."

"The peoples laughed and did not heed the words of the Eternal One. But one people was struck with sorrow, and longed to see again his wondrous works. So they set about the great task that he decreed, and looked forward always to the coming of the Eternal One."

"And here you are," finished Hastings, sardonically.

Sung-Hoi did not answer. The three men stood in the soft breeze, listening to the far-off sounds of birds calling through the jungle.

"Are you trying to tell me," said Simms, finally, "that you people actually move these discs?" Sung-Hoi nodded.

"But how? They must weigh a hundred tons, even if they aren't solid."

Sung-Hoi looked away into the sky. "The Eternal One has shown us the secret way," he said simply. There was an awkward silence, which Hastings finally broke.

"All right," he said with an indulgent smile. "Let's assume you are moving these discs, for whatever reasons you might have. Are you moving them here? To this spire?"

"Yes."

"And I'm guessing that first spire we saw is where the discs started. Is that right?" Sung-Hoi nodded.

"There weren't any discs on that one, so the remaining ones must be over there," said Hastings, pointing to the south. "How many are there?"

"There are nine."

Simms spoke up. "That makes twenty altogether," he said. Sung-Hoi nodded in agreement.

"Twenty," said Hastings absently. "Twenty silver discs." He peered out toward the southern spire, wrinkling his forehead. "How long does it take to move one?" he asked suddenly.

"Sung-Hoi frowned. "It is... difficult. We need four full seasons."

"Four seasons? A year, then?" Sung-Hoi nodded. Hastings rubbed his chin with his meaty fingers. "Well, there's something I don't understand. Why aren't you done yet?" The two other men stared at him soundlessly. He folded his arms across his barrel chest and continued.

"Well, look you've got these three spires, right? One's for where they start, one's for where they finish, and one's sort of an intermediate. So you remove the discs from the first spire, one at a time, of course, and you put them on the intermediate spire, making an upside-down tower. Then you move the discs again, over to the third spire, and the tower's just where you want it - and right-side-up, too. With twenty discs, that ought to take you about forty years, more or less. So why haven't you finished?"

Sung-Hoi stared at him solemnly, shaking his head. "You do not understand," he said slowly. "We could never move the discs this way. It would break the Great Law."

Hastings frowned. "The Great Law?"

"Yes. We are forbidden to put a larger disc on a smaller disc."

There was a long silence. Hastings stared at Sung-Hoi in disbelief.

"Good God, man," he said, finally, "how do you expect to finish if you can't even..."

"Hey!" said Simms, suddenly.

Hastings scowled at him. "What?"

"I know this game!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"The Towers, The Towers! You know, it's a game, a math puzzle, I played it once. You have a tower of discs and three pegs, and you move the tower from one peg to another, but you can only move one disc at a time. And you can't put a larger one on a smaller one, that's the trick, that's the tough part, and if you have too many discs it takes forever to finish, God let's see, what's that game called? The Towers, The Towers of... something, some city somewhere, I don't remember." He turned to Sung-Hoi. "You people are actually playing this game? For real?"

Sung-Hoi frowned again. "It is not a game," he said. Simms swept on, oblivious.

"And there are twenty discs? Let's see, twenty discs, two to the power of..." Simms calculated for a moment. "That's big. It must take a million moves to finish."

"One million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred and seventy-five."

Simms gave a long, low whistle. One million. And at a year per move...

"So there are nine discs left?"

"Yes."

Again he counted in his head, quickly, nine discs, two to the power of nine...

"Hey!" he said. "Hey, that's only five hundred! That's only five hundred more moves!"

"Yes. Five hundred and eleven. Five hundred and eleven and it is finished."

Finally Hastings spoke up. "Look that's great, Sung-Hoi, only five hundred left. It looks like you guys really have things under control out here. So what do you want with us? I mean, you've gone this far on your own, right? Surely you don't need us to help you calculate the last five hundred moves?"

Sung-Hoi didn't speak for a long while. He just stared away to the east, across the trees to some unseen point on the horizon, where smoke and smog from a hundred factories and fires and machines poured up and away into the sky.

"They are coming," he said, quietly.

Simms looked out, too. "Who?" he asked.

"Them. The noisy ones. The killing ones. The ones who burn and chop down and destroy, the ones who rule and fight and control, and kill what they can't control. They are coming. For many days I have come to see, to see their dirty breath on the horizon, to hear the far-off noises they make. You hear? Listen." And Simms listened. He heard or half-heard the familiar sounds, the sounds of metals pounding metals, of machines and smoke and yelling, of the machine-people working.

"I have watched it. I have watched it get closer and closer. They are coming. They will find us, burn down our village, kill our children, topple these towers." He turned and looked at Simms. He looked at him hard, as though making a decision. He spoke.

"You have machines. Gears, metal, ropes, the whirring scorpion-fliers that hover and lift and move. Can you lift these discs?"

Simms wrinkled his forehead in concentration. "Sure. Sure, I think we could. I mean, if you people can move them, we ought to be able to bring in a few helicopters..."

And then he stopped. He looked at the priest incredulously. "You want us to help you finish!"

Sung-Hoi nodded once.

Hastings laughed out loud. "That's it, isn't it? What would take you five centuries would take us five weeks."

Sung-Hoi nodded again.

"We will pay you," he said. "In gold."

Hastings snorted and sat back down, shaking his head in amazement. Simms stared out over the trees. Five hundred, he thought.  Only five hundred...

"Sung-Hoi?"

"Yes?"

"What will happen? I mean, when you finish the game. What will happen?"

"When the final disc rests atop this tower, the Eternal One will return in all his glory."

"And what then?"

"Then?" said the priest. "When the Eternal One comes, the world will end."