Finally, Bruce finds himself manipulated into assassinating Fitzpatrick by the devious Murrey and his Timermen comrades, who threaten his family with death. After Bruce succeeds (with help from Pularski, Fitzpatrick's bodyguard) in blowing up Fitzpatrick's court, Bruce flees with a few survivors for Australia, where he is met by Dr. Murrey. Murrey reveals the secret of the Timermen to Bruce. He explains that all societies experience a heroic age, an age of imperial might and an age of decline. The Timermen's actions, going back to the Storm Times centuries before, are all engineered to keep the Yukons in a perpetual heroic age and avoid what they view as the decline of civilization that occurred during the early and mid 21st century. To achieve this end, they will continually promote the rise of a Yukon empire and then bring it crashing down through internal discontent, until the time when the rest of the world had been reduced to Stone Age conditions. At which point they may allow a return to the electrical age.