Back before mankind entered the realm of infinite space, back before Earth itself was anything but a primeval jungle, there were still stars that had inhabited planets and there had been a galactic civilization and an extra-galactic empire. And when millions of years later men ventured among the stars they found only the faintest traces of this primal civilization—until the moment when a space map was found giving the coordinates of an unknown world that had been the arsenal of the unimaginably mighty weapons of that First Empire. Then the quest was on—for whoever located that treasure trove first could dictate his own terms to a thousand proud planets.