rom the whiskey-bottle, died with
the same symptoms in about ninety seconds."

"Who had access to the whiskey-bottle?"

"A geek servant, who takes care of the room. He was caught, an hour
earlier, trying to slip off the island without a pass; they were
holding him at the guardhouse when Governor Harrington died. He's now
being questioned by the Kragans." The girl's face was bleakly
remorseless. "I hope they do plenty to him!"

"I hope they don't kill him before he talks."

"Wait a moment, general; we have General M'zangwe, now," the girl
said. "I'll switch you over."

The screen broke into a kaleidoscopic jumble of color, then cleared;
the chocolate-brown face of Themistocles M'zangwe was looking out of
it.

"I heard what happened, how they found him, and about that geek
chamber-valet being arrested," von Schlichten said. "Did you get
anything out of him?"

"He's admitted putting poison in the bottle, but he claims it was his
own idea. But he's one of Father Keeluk's parishioners, so...."

"Keeluk! God damn, so that was it!" von Schlichten almost shouted.
"Now I know what he wanted with Stalin, and that goat, and those
rabbits!"

Five thousand miles away, in Konkrook, Themistocles M'zangwe whistled.

"_Bismillah_! How dumb can we get?" he cried. "Of course they'd need
terrestrial animals, to find out what would poison a Terran! Wait a
minute; I'll make a note of that, to spring on this geek, if the
Kragans haven't finished him by now." Von Schlichten watched M'zangwe
pick up a stenophone and whisper into it for a moment. "All right,
Carlos, what else?"

"Has Eric been notified?"

"We called Keegark, but he's in audience with King Orgzild, and we
can't reach him."

"Well, who's in charge at Konkrook, now?"

"Not much of anybody. Laviola, the Fiscal Secretary, and Hans
Meyerstein, the Banking Cartel's lawyer, and Howlett, the Personnel
Chief, and Buhrmann, the Commercial Secretary, have made up a sort of
quadrumvirate and are trying to run things. I don't know what would
happen if anything came up suddenly...." A blue-gray uniformed arm,
with a major's cuff-braid, came into the screen, handing a slip of
paper to M'zangwe; he took it, glanced at it, and swore. Von
Schlichten waited until he had read it through.

"Well, something has, all right," the African said. "We just got a
call from Jaikark's Palace--a revolt's broken out, presumably headed
by Gurgurk; Household Guards either mutinied or wiped out