five-caliber automatics appeared in the hands of the three at the table, and Crane
flipped his remote control helmet onto his head. Seaton, magnum in hand, snapped on
the outside lights and peered out through the recently installed one-way glass of the
door.
“Speak of the devil,” he said in relief. “It’s Hizzoner.” He opened the door wide and went
on, “Come in, Your Honor. We were just talking about you.”
Prenk came in, his eyes bulging slightly at the sight of the arsenal of armament now
being put back into holsters. They bulged still more as he looked at the Japanese, and
he gulped as he stared fascinatedly at the green-skinned Osnomians.
“I knew, of course, within a couple of days,” Prenk said then, quietly, “that you who call
yourself Ky-El Mokak were not confining your statements to the exact truth. No wilder
could possibly have done what you were doing; but by that time I knew that you,
whoever you were, were really on our side. I had no suspicion until this moment,
however, that you were actually from another world. I thought that your speech to the
miners was what you said it was going to be, ‘a shot in the arm of hope’ It now seems
more than slightly possible that you were talking about the very matters I came here
tonight to see you about. Certain supplies, you will remember!’
“I remember. I lied to you, yes. Wholesale and retail. But how else could I have made
the approach, the mood you were in, without blowing everything higher than up?”
“Your technique was probably the best possible, I admit.”
“Okay. Yes, we’re from a galaxy so far away from here that you could barely find it with
the biggest telescope this world ever had. Our business at the moment is to wipe out
every Chloran in this region of space, but we can’t do it without-among other things-a lot
more data than we now have. And we’ll need weeks of time, mostly elsewhere, for
preparation.
“But before we go too deeply into that you must meet my associates. People, this is His
Honor Ree-Toe Prenk; what you might call the Mayor of the City of Ty-Ko-Ma of the
Planet Ray-See-Nee. You know all about him. ReeToe, this is Hi-Fi Mokak, my wife-Lo-
Test and Hi-Test Crane, husband and wife-” and he went on with two more pairs of
coined names.
“Hi-Fi indeed!” Dorothy snorted, under her breath, in English. “Just you wait ’til I get you
alone tonight, you egregious clown!”
“Wha’d’ya mean `clown’?” he retorted. “Try your hand sometime at inventing seven
names on the spur of the moment!”
Seaton then put on a headset, slipped one over Prenk’s head, and said in thought:
“This is what is left-the resi–you might say-of our mobile base the Skylark of Valeron,”
and went on to show him and to describe to him the Great Brain, the immense tank-
chart of the entire First Universe, the tremendous driving engines and even more
tremendous engines of offense and of defense.
Prenk was held spellbound and speechless, for this “residue,” hundreds of kilometers in
diameter and hundreds of millions of tons in weight, was so utterly beyond any artificial
structure Prenk had ever imagined that he simply could not grasp its magnitude at all.
And when Seaton went on to show him a full mental picture of what that base had been
before the battle with the Chlorans and what it would have to be before they could
begin to move against the Chlorans-the one-thousand kilometer control-circles, the
thousands of cubic kilometers of solidly packed offensive and defensive gear, the
scores of fantastically braced and buttressed layers of inoson that composed the
worldlet’s outer skin-he was so strongly affected as to be speechless in fact.
“I . . . I see. That is . . . a little, maybe . . . ” he stammered, then subsided into silence.
“Yes, it is a bit big to get used to all at once,” Seaton agreed. “It needs a lot of work.
Some we’re doing; some of it can’t be done anywhere near here; but we don’t want to
leave without being reasonably sure that you and your people will be alive when we get
back. So we want a lot of information from you.”
“I’ll be glad to tell you everything I know or can find out.,,
“Thanks. Ideas, first. How much do you think the quisling Big Shots actually know?
What do you think they’ll do about it? What do you think His Magnificence the Dictator
will do? And what should we do about what he thinks he’s going to do? In a few days
we’ll want all the information you can get-facts, names, dates, places, times, and
personnel. Also one sample copy of each and every item of equipment desired; with
numbers wanted and times and places of delivery. Brother Prenk, you have the floor.”
“One advantage of a small town and a group like ours,” Prenk said, slowly, “is that
everybody knows everybody else’s business. Thus, we all knew who the spies were, but
the people were all so low in their minds that they simply did not care whether they lived
or died. We had done our best and had failed; most of us had given up hope
completely. Now, however, the few remaining spies have been locked up and are under
control. They and the overseers are still reporting, but-” he smiled wolfishly-“they are
saying precisely and only what I tell them to say. This condition can’t last very long; but,
after what you just showed me, I’m pretty sure I can make it last long enough. We have
organized a really efficient force of guerrilla fighters and our plans for the capital are . .
.”
A couple of weeks later, then, three hundred fifty-eight highly trained men and one
highly trained woman set out.
A woman? Yes. Dorothy had protested vigorously.
“But Sitar! You aren’t going, surely? Surely you’re staying home?”
“Staying home!” the green girl had blazed. “The First Wife of a prince of Osnome goes
with her prince wherever he goes. She fights beside him, at need she dies beside him.
Would you have him die fighting and me live an hour? I’d blow myself to bits!”
“My God!” Dorothy had gasped, and had stared, appalled.
`That’s right,” Seaton had told her. “Their ethics, mores and customs differ more than
somewhat from ours, you know.” And nothing more had been said about Sitar being a
member of the Expeditionary Force.
Prenk’s guerrillas had infiltrated the capital city by ones and twos; no group ever larger
than two. Each one wore the costume of an easily recognizable class of citizen. They
were apparently artisans and workmen, soldiers, sailors, clerks, businessmen, tycoons
of industry. Nor were the watches they all wore on their wrists any more alike than were
their costumes-except in one respect. They all told the same time, to the tenth of a split
second, and they all were kept in sync by pulses from a tiny power-pack that had been
hidden in a tree in the outskirts of the city.
At time zero minus thirty minutes, three hundred fifty-nine persons began to enter into
and to distribute themselves throughout an immense building that resembled a palace
or a cathedral much more than the capitol building even of a world.
At time zero minus four seconds all those persons, who bad in the meantime been
doing inconspicuous this and innocuous that, changed direction toward or began to
walk toward or kept on walking toward their objectives.
At time zero on the tick, three hundred fifty-nine knives came out of concealment and
that exact number of persons fell.
Some of the guerrillas remained on guard where their victims lay. Others went into
various offices on various businesses. On the top-most floor four innocent-looking
visitors blasted open the steel door of Communications and shot the four operators then
on duty. The leader of the four invaders stepped up to the master-control desk, shoved
a body aside, flipped three or four switches, and said:
“Your attention, please! These programs have been interrupted to announce that
former Premier Da-Bay Saien and his sycophants have been executed for high treason.
Premier Ree-Toe Prenk and his loyalists are now the government. Business is to go on
as usual; no new orders will be issued except as they become necessary. That is all.
Scheduled programs will now be resumed.”
It was not as easy everywhere, however, as that announcement indicated. By the very
nature of things, the information secured by the counterspies was incomplete and
sometimes, especially in fine detail, was wrong. Thus, when Seaton took his post on the
fifteenth floor, standing before and admiring a heroic-size bronze statue of a woman
strangling a boa constrictor whose coils enveloped half her height, he saw that there
were four guards, instead of the two he had expected to find, at the door of the office