It is sometimes referred to as The Call of the Void. It hovers in dangerous places, luring travellers to jump to their death in an attempt to satisfy a morbid curiosity. It was once a Hero of the People, a Hero long dead, but that name is now a curse. Who among men is the last of the Great Ones? The call is coming, and those on earth must answer it swiftly before it is too late. --From a letter written by Randolph Carter My name is Randolph Carter, and I am writing to you because the world is ending, and I am desperate to escape it. Not many weeks ago, as I sat nervously waiting for the shuttle to take me out of the solar system, I heard a terrible, blasphemous announcement on the intercom from a port in Argolis IV. It was the message of the voiceless to the rulers of the solar system: "WORCEST OUT OF SPACE." And so it continued for nearly forty-five million years. Out of the solar system--that accursed realm of no return whose insane outer planets gnaw at each other's gravitation--the hellish Entity that is the Great One had said, with full and terrible knowledge of my route through the void, that I must flash back seven hundred million years to a time before the first