painstakingly destructive than average about anything,
Captain Bors was about them. He saw to it that they burned to ashes. He
crushed the ashes. He stirred them. It would be unthinkable that such
morsels could ever be pieced together and their contents even guessed
at.

He went on with the work. His jaunty uniform became more smeared and
smudged. He gave himself no rest. There were papers from other planets
now under the hegemony of Mekin. Some were memoranda from citizens of
this planet, who had traveled upon the worlds which Mekin dominated as
it was about to dominate Kandar. They, especially had to be pulverized.
Every confidential document in the Ministry for Diplomatic Affairs was
in the process of destruction, but Captain Bors in person destroyed
those which would cause most suffering if read by the wrong persons.

In other ministries and other places similar holocausts were under way.
There was practically nothing going on on Kandar which was not related
to the disaster for which the people of that world waited. The feel of
bitterness and despair was everywhere. Broadcasting stations stayed on
the air only to report monotonously that the tragic event had not yet
happened. The small space-navy of Kandar waited, aground, to take the
king and some other persons on board at the last moment. When the
Mekinese navy arrived--or as much of it as was needed to make resistance
hopeless--the end for Kandar would have come. That was the impending
disaster. If it came too soon, Bors's task of destruction couldn't be
completed as was wished. In such a case this Ministry and all the others
would hastily be doused with incendiary material and fired, and it would
desperately be hoped that all the planet's records went up in the
flames.

Captain Bors flung more and more papers on the blaze. He came to an end
of them.

The communicator buzzed, again. He answered once more.

"_Sir, the space-yacht_ Sylva _is landed. It comes from Norden and has
no direct information about the Mekinese. But there's a man named Morgan
with a very important letter for the Minister for Diplomatic Affairs.
It's from the Minister for Diplomatic Affairs on Norden._"

Bors said sardonically, "Maybe he should wait a few days or hours and
give it to the Mekinese! Send him over if he wants to take the chance,
but warn him not to let anybody from his yacht leave the spaceport!"

"_Yes, sir._"

Bors made a quick circuit of the Ministry building to make