Leto H, just beginning his reign, needed time. He knew that he would continue, and perhaps hasten, the transformation which Kyncs had initiated, but be had not yet decided at what pace it would be done. In 10221 he purchased a breathing space of several decades by destroying the qamts of four of the eight paimaries: Gara Rulen, Windsack, Old Gap, and Harg.2 Deprived of their water, the still-fragile plantings withered and died. This left only half the original number of green areas- Wind Pass, Chin Rock. Hagga Basin, and Tsimpo-4o harbor Kynes's, and bis Eremens', dreams. The Fremen, terrified by the sudden destruction, but unable to face abandoning their work, concentrated their efforts on the remaining sites and hoped for peace. Leto II. once his rule was firmly 'established, gave them rather more man that. He brought the decades-old secret into the open, acknowledged the paimaries' existence, and made their advancement an Imperial priority. The Fremea were able to go on with their work at a pace which would have astonished and gratified Pardot Kynes. By 10260, fifty paimaries, each larger than any of the original sites, were in various stages of completion; a century later, they had spread over enough of the Arrakis surface to establish the "self-sustaining cycle" which Kynes had originally predicted would occur. (He had estimated mat three percent of the green plant element would have to be involved in forming carbon compounds to start the cycle working, and he was very nearly correct. The actual figure was 3.92 percent.) As the greenbelts and groves took over larger and larger segments of the planet, the native lifeforms, including the sandworms, were driven off into increasingly smaller reservation;*. The establishment of Kynes's cycle signaled the end for them: the last sandworra sighting occurred in 10402,' and the sandworm was in its death throes. The God Emperor stepped in once again, ordering the placement of Ixian weather-control satellites over the small area of the planet which remained desert. While weather satellites had been in use on Arrakis to one degree or another since the rule of Leto IPs father, these were intended for a use unique in the planet's history. Earlier satellites had been brought in to help gentle the fierce climate; these were intended to bring back some of that lost ferocity, to preserve one small piece of Arrakis, the Sareer, in as close to its original form as possible. The work for which the paimaries had been designed was completed, well ahead of the fondest expectations of the man who had first evisioned them. Arrakis, Dune, the Desert Planet, in a sense existed no longer. C.T NOTES 'In 10148, Cartha fungus threatened to destroy Ecaz's entire fogwood crop; Kynes recommended importing spores of Kuenn's Fungus, a benign growth which crowded out the Cartha, saving the valuable wood. ^The eight paimaries were named for eight of the Imperial Testing Stations; in this way, it was hoped, they could be mentioned without alerting the Harkonnens.