d or so. The other department heads and
assistants turned out to be still weaker, and not one of the rank and
file ever became able to cover more than a single planet.

This sense was not exactly telepathy; at least not what Hilton had
always thought telepathy would be. If anything, however, it was more.
It was a lumping together of all five known human senses--and half a
dozen unknown ones called, collectively, "intuition"--into one
super-sense that was all-inclusive and all-informative. If he ever could
learn exactly what it was and exactly what it did and how it did it ...
but he'd better chip-chop the wool-gathering and get back onto the job.

* * * * *

The Stretts had licked the old Masters very easily, and intended to wipe
out the Omans and the humans. They had no doubt at all as to their
ability to do it. Maybe they could. If the Masters hadn't made some
progress that the Omans didn't know about, they probably could. That was
the first thing to find out. As soon as they'd been converted he'd call
in all the experts and they'd go through the Masters' records like a
dose of salts through a hillbilly schoolma'am.

At that point in Hilton's cogitations Sawtelle came in.

He had come down in his gig, to confer with Hilton as to the newly
beefed-up fleet. Instead of being glum and pessimistic and foreboding,
he was chipper and enthusiastic. They had rebuilt a thousand Oman ships.
By combining Oman and Terran science, and adding everything the First
Team had been able to reduce to practise, they had hyped up the power
by a good fifteen per cent. Seven hundred of those ships, and all his
men, were now arrayed in defense around Ardry. Three hundred, manned by
Omans, were around Fuel Bin.

"Why?" Hilton asked. "It's Fuel Bin they've been attacking."

"Uh-uh. Minor objective," the captain demurred, positively. "The real
attack will be here at you; the headquarters and the brains. Then Fuel
Bin will be duck soup. But the thing that pleased me most is the
control. Man, you never imagined such control! No admiral in history
ever had such control of ten ships as I have of seven hundred. Those
Omans spread orders so fast that I don't even finish thinking one and
it's being executed. And no misunderstandings, no slips. For instance,
this last batch--fifteen skeletons. Far out; they're getting cagy. I
just thought 'Box 'em in and slug 'em' and--In! Across! Out! Socko!
Pffft! Just like that an