guns, in addition to her 90's, had
just arrived at Kankad's. He had the _Aldebaran_ sent north along the
crest of the mountain-range between the Hoork and Konk river-valleys,
where she could cover both with her own radar and other
detection-devices and exchange information with the _Sky-Spy_, and the
_Gaucho_ sent in what looked like the right course to intercept the
Boer-class freighter from Keegark. The _Northern Lights_, also with
screens tuned to the _Sky-Spy_, was sent to take over the Aldebaran's
regular station. Finally, he called Skilk and had the _Northern Star_
sent south down the Hoork Valley.

After that, there was nothing to do but wait, and watch the screens.
Paula Quinton put in an appearance shortly after he had finished
calling Skilk, pushing a cocktail-wagon on which their interrupted
dinners had been placed. They finished eating, and drank coffee, and
smoked. Most of the rest of his staff who were not busy on the
bomb-project or at the shipyards or with the occupation of Konkrook
drifted in; they all sat and stared from one to another of the
screens, which told, in radar-patterns and direct vision and
telescopic vision and heat and radiation detection, the story of what
was going on to the north-east of them.

Keegark was dark, on the vision-screen; evidently King Orgzild had
invented the blackout, too. Not that it did him any good; the
radar-screen showed the city clearly, and it was just as clear on the
radiation and heat screens. The Keegarkan ship was completely blacked
out, but the radiations from her engines and the distinctive
radiation-pattern of her contragravity-field showed clearly, and
there was a speck that marked her position on the radar-screen. The
same position was marked with a pin-point of light on the vision
screen--some device on _Sky-Spy_, synchronized with the detectors,
kept it focused there. The Company ships and contragravity vehicles
all were carrying topside lights, visible only from above, which
flashed alternate red and blue to identify them.

Time crawled slowly around the clock-face on the wall, the
sixty-five-second minutes of Ullr dragging like hours. The spots that
marked the enemy ship and her hunters crawled, too; seen from the
hundred-and-fifty-mile altitude of the _Sky-Spy_, even the
six-hundred-mile speed of the _Gaucho_ was barely visible. They drank
coffee till the stuff revolted them; they smoked until their throats
and mouths were dry, they watched the