fifty days ago, Galactic Standard. They'd put off the
first shot, six bombs, before I got in from Terra. I saw the second
shot a day or so before I left Niflheim on the _Canberra_. Dr. Gomes
had to stay over till the _Pretoria_ to put off the third shot. Why?"

"Did you run into a geek named Gorkrink, while you were on Nif?" he
asked her. "And what sort of work was he doing?"

* * * * *

"Gorkrink? I don't seem to remember.... Oh, yes! He was helping Dr.
Murillo, the seismologist. His year was up after the second shot; he
came to Ullr on the _Canberra_. Dr. Murillo was sorry to lose him. He
understood Lingua Terra perfectly; Dr. Murillo could talk to him, the
way you do with Kankad, without using a geek-speaker."

"Well, but what sort of work ...?"

"Helping set and fire the A-bombs.... _Oh! Good Lord!_"

"You can say that again, and deal in Allah, Shiva, and Kali," von
Schlichten told her. "Especially Kali.... Harry! See if you can get
some more speed out of this can. I want to get to Konkrook while it's
still there!"

It wouldn't be there long, the way things looked. King Orgzild had
four tons of plutonium, and with Prince Gorkrink probably able to
build A-bombs, Keegark would be set to bring Ullr its first taste of
nuclear warfare. Von Schlichten shuddered as he pictured that
happening. At the moment, shuddering was about the only thing he could
do.

X

[Illustration]

It was full dark when Konkrook came in view beyond the East Konk
Mountains, a lurid smear on the underside of the clouds, and at
Gongonk Island and at the Company farms to the south, a couple of
bunches of searchlights were fingering about in the sky. When von
Schlichten turned on the outside sound-pickup, he could hear the
distant tom-tomming of heavy guns, and the crash of shells and bombs.
Keeping the car high enough to be above the trajectories of incoming
shells, Harry Quong circled over the city while Hassan Bogdanoff
talked to Gongonk Inland on the radio.

The city was in a bad way. There were seventy-five to a hundred big
fires going, and a new one started in a rising ball of thermoconcentrate
flame while they watched. The three gun-cutters, _Elmoran_, _Gaucho_ and
_Bushranger_, and about fifty big freight lorries converted to bombers,
were shuttling back and forth between the island and the city. The Royal
Palace was on fire from end to end, and the entire waterfront and
industrial district