e massacred. Some of
them were lucky enough to get killed fighting. The geeks took Eric and
Hendrik alive; rolled them in a puddle of thermoconcentrate fuel and
set fire to them. When we can spare the contragravity, we're going to
drop something on the Kee-geek embassy, over in town."

Von Schlichten grimaced, but he'd expected something like it. He told
M'zangwe about King Kankad's offer. "His crowd ought to be coming in
in a couple of hours. What can you scrape up to send to Kankad's Town
to airlift Kragans in?"

"Well, we have three hundred-and-fifty-foot gun-cutters, one 90-mm.
apiece. The _Elmoran_, the _Gaucho_, and the _Bushranger_. But they're
not much as transports, and we need them here pretty badly. Then, we
have five fertilizer and charcoal scows, and a lot of heavy transport
lorries, and two one-eighty-foot pickup boats."

"How about the _Piet Joubert?_" von Schlichten asked. "She was due in
Konkrook from the east about 1300 today, wasn't she?"

M'zangwe swore. "She got in, all right. But the geeks boarded her at
the dock, within twenty minutes after things started. They tried to
lift out with her, and the Channel Battery shot her down into Konkrook
Channel, off the Fifty-sixth Street docks."

"Well, you couldn't let the geeks have her, to use against us. What do
you hear from the other ships?"

"_Procyon's_ at Grank; we haven't had any reports of any kind from
there, which doesn't look so good. The _Northern Lights_ is at Grank,
too. The _Oom Paid Kruger_ should have been at Bwork, in the east,
when the gun went off. And the _Jan Smuts_ and the _Christiaan De
Wett_ were both at Keegark; we can assume Orgzild has both of them."

"All right. I'm sending _Aldebaran_ to Kankad's, to pick up more
reenforcements for you."

* * * * *

Leaving the booth, he heard, above the clatter of
communications-machines and the hubbub of voices, Jules Keaveney
arguing contentiously. Evidently Colonel Cheng-Li's efforts to drag
the Resident out of his despondency had been an excessive success.

"But it's crazy! Not just here; everywhere on Ullr!" Keaveney was
saying. "How did they do it? They have no telecast equipment."

"You have me stopped, Jules," Mordkovitz was replying. "I know a lot
of rich geeks have receiving sets, but no sending sets."

The pattern that had been tantalizing von Schlichten took visible
shape in his mind. For a moment, he shelved the matter of the
_Aldebara