g anyway, as we already had determined,"
concluded the scout.

Silently the Sthanto sat in thought for some moments. Then he raised his
head, and looked at the scout once more.

"You have done well. You secured some information of import, which was
more than we had dared hope for. But you managed things poorly. The
woman should not have died so soon. We can only guess.

"The radiation of the suns of space--hmmm--" Sthanto Thalt's brow
wrinkled in thought. "The radiation of the _suns_ of space. Were his
power derived from the sun near which he is operating, he would not have
said _suns_. It was more than one?"

"It was, oh Sthanto," replied the scout positively.

"His power is unreasonable. I doubt that he gave the true explanation.
It may well have been that he did not trust the Venonians. I would not,
for all their warless ways. But surely the suns of space give very
little power at any given point at random. Else space would not be cold.

"But go, Scout, and you will be assigned a position in the fleet. The
Colonial fleet, the remains of it, have arrived, and the colonists been
removed. They failed. We will use their ships. You will be assigned."
The scout left, and was indeed assigned to a ship of the colonists. The
incoming colonial transports had been met at the outposts of the system,
and rayed out of existence at once--failures, and bringing danger at
their heels. Besides--there was no room for them on Thett without
Thessians being crowded uncomfortably.

As their battleships arrived they were conducted to one of the
satellites, and each man was "fumigated," lest he bring disease to the
mother planet. Men entered, men apparently emerged. But they were
different men.

"It seems," said the Sthanto softly, after the scout had left, "that we
will have little difficulty, for they are, we know, vulnerable to the
triple ray. And if we can but once destroy their driving units they will
be helpless on our world. I doubt that wild tale of their using no fuel.
Even if that be true they will be helpless with their power apparatus
destroyed, and--if we miss the first time, we can seek it out, or drive
them off!

"All of which is dependent on the fact that they attack at a point where
we have a triple ray station to meet them. There are but three of these,
actually, but I have had dummy stations, apparently identical with our
other real stations, set up in many places.

"This gibberish we hear of creating matter--i