le blood shed.
There seemed to be no secret plots. There were no skulking leaders, no
passwords, nothing that in former years had marked rebellion against
tyranny.

It was a revolution carried out with utter boldness. Secret police were
helpless, for it was not a secret revolution. The regular police and the
troopers were helpless because the men they wanted to arrest were
shadows that flitter here and there ... large and substantial shadows,
but impossible to seize and imprison.

Every scheme that was hatched within the government circles was known
almost at once to the ghostly leaders who stalked the land. Police
detachments, armed with warrants for the arrests of men who had
participated in some action which would stamp them as active rebels,
found the suspects absent when they broke down the doors. Someone had
warned them. Troops, hurried to points where riots had broken out,
arrived to find peaceful scenes, but with evidence of recent battle. The
rioters had been warned, had made their getaway.

When the rebels struck it was always at the most opportune time, when
the government was off balance or off guard.

In the first day of the revolt, Ranthoor fell when the maddened
populace, urged on by the words of a shadowy John Moore Mallory, charged
the federation buildings. The government fled, leaving all records
behind, to Satellite City on Ganymede.

In the first week three Martian cities fell, but Sandebar, the capital,
still held out. On Venus, Radium City was taken by the rebels within
twenty-four hours after the first call to revolt had rung across the
worlds, but New Chicago, the seat of government, still was in the
government's hands, facing a siege.

Government propagandists spread the word that the material energy
engines were not safe. Reports were broadcast that on at least two
occasions the engines had blown up, killing the men who operated them.

But this propaganda failed to gain credence, for in the cities that were
in the rebel hands, technicians were at work manufacturing and setting
up the material engines. Demonstrations were given. The people saw them,
saw what enormous power they developed.

* * * * *

Russ Page stared incredulously at the television screen. It seemed to be
shifting back and forth. One second it held the distorted view of
Satellite City on Ganymede, and the next second the view of jumbled, icy
desert somewhere outside the city.

"Look he