so that you can call for
help. You will not be able to carry enough fuel to land there--in fact,
nearly all the journey will have to be made without power, traveling
freely in a highly elongated orbit around the sun--but if you escape the
hexans, you should be able to reach home safely, in time. It is for the
consideration of this plan that this meeting has been called."

* * * * *

"Just one question," Breckenridge spoke. "The hexans are intelligent.
Why are they leaving Europa and Ganymede so unguarded that human beings
can move back there and that we can land there, all undetected?"

"I will answer that question myself," replied King. "Captain Czuv did
not quite do justice to his own people. It is true that they are being
conquered, but for every human life that is taken, a thousand hexans
die, and for every human ship that is lost, twenty hexan vessels are
annihilated in return. While the hexans are masters of rays, the
humans are equally masters of explosives and of mechanisms. They can
hit a perfect score upon any target in free space whose course and
acceleration can be determined, at any range up to five thousand
kilometers, and they have explosives thousands of times as powerful as
any known to us. Ray screens are effective only against rays, and the
hexans cannot destroy anything they cannot see before it strikes them.
So it is that all the hexan vessels except those necessary to protect
their own strongholds, are being concentrated against Callisto. They
cannot spare vessels to guard uselessly the abandoned satellites.
Because of the enormously high gravity of Jupiter the hexans there are
safe from human attack save for ineffectual long-range bombardment, but
Io is being attacked constantly and it is probable that in a few more
years Io also will be an abandoned world. Some of you may have received
the impressions that the hexans are to triumph immediately, but such an
idea is wrong. The humans can, and will, hold out for a hundred years or
more unless the enemy perfects a destructive ray of the type referred
to. Even then, I think that our human cousins will hold out a long time.
They are able men, fighters all, and their underground cities are
beautifully protected."

There was little argument. Most of the auditors could understand that
the suggested course was the best one possible. The remainder were
so stunned by the unbelievable events of the attack that they had no
in