Redax were well founded. It all came back to the old basic
tenet of the service: the end justified the means. They must use every
method and man under their control to make sure that Topaz would remain
a western possession, even though that strange planet now swung far
beyond the sky which covered both the western and eastern alliances on
Terra. Time had run out too fast; they were being forced to play what
cards they held, even though those might be very low ones. Ashe would be
back, but not, Kelgarries hoped, until this had been decided one way or
another. Not until this was finished.

Finished! Kelgarries blinked at the wall. Perhaps _they_ were finished,
too. No one would know until the transport ship landed on that other
world which appeared on the direction tape symbolized by a jewellike
disk of gold-brown which had given it the code name of Topaz.

2

There were an even dozen of the air-borne guardians, each following the
swing of its own orbital path just within the atmospheric envelope of
the planet which glowed as a great bronze-golden gem in the four-world
system of a yellow star. The globes had been launched to form a web of
protection around Topaz six months earlier, and the highest skill had
gone into their production. Just as contact mines sown in a harbor could
close that landfall to ships not knowing the secret channel, so was this
world supposedly closed to any spaceship not equipped with the signal to
ward off the sphere missiles.

That was the theory of the new off-world settlers whose protection they
were to be, already tested as well as possible, but as yet not put to
the ultimate proof. The small bright globes spun undisturbed across a
two-mooned sky at night and made reassuring blips on an installation
screen by day.

Then a thirteenth object winked into being, began the encircling,
closing spiral of descent. A sphere resembling the warden-globes, it was
a hundred times their size, and its orbit was purposefully controlled
by instruments under the eye and hand of a human pilot.

Four men were strapped down on cushioned sling-seats in the control
cabin of the Western Alliance ship, two hanging where their fingers
might reach buttons and levers, the others merely passengers, their own
labor waiting for the time when they would set down on the alien soil of
Topaz. The planet hung there in their visa-screen, richly beautiful in
its amber gold, growing larger, nearer, so that they could