the dock, within twenty minutes after things started. They tried to
lift out with her, and the Channel Battery shot her down into Konkrook
Channel, off the Fifty Sixth Street docks."

"Well, you couldn't let the geeks have her, to use against us. What do
you hear from the other ships?"

"_Procyon_'s at Grank; we haven't had any reports of any kind from
there, which doesn't look so good. The _Northern Lights_ is at Grank,
too. The _Oom Paul Kruger_ should have been at Bwork, in the east,
when the gun went off. And the _Jan Smuts_ and the _Christiaan De
Wett_ were both at Keegark; we can assume Orgzild has both of them."

"All right. I'm sending _Aldebaran_ to Kankad's, to pick up more
reenforcements for you."

"We can use them! And with _Aldebaran_, we ought to be able to take
the offensive against the city by this time tomorrow. Anything else?"

"Not at the moment. I'll see about getting _Aldebaran_ sent off, now."

Leaving the booth, he heard, above the clatter of
communications-machines and hubbub of voices, Jules Keaveney arguing
contentiously. Evidently Colonel Cheng-Li's efforts to drag the
Resident out of his despondency had been an excessive success.

"But it's crazy! Not just here; everywhere on Uller!" Keaveney was
saying. "How did they do it? They have no telecast equipment."

"You have me stopped, Jules," Mordkovitz was replying. "I know a lot
of rich geeks have receiving sets, but no sending sets."

The pattern that had been tantalizing von Schlichten took visible
shape in his mind. For a moment, he shelved the matter of the
_Aldebaran_.

"They didn't need sending equipment, Barney," he said. "They used
ours."

"What do you mean?" Keaveney challenged.

"Look what happened. Sid Harrington was poisoned in Konkrook. The
news, of course, was sent out at once, as the geeks knew it would be,
to every residency and trading-station on Uller, and that was the
signal they'd agreed upon, probably months in advance. All they had to
do was have that geek servant put poison in Harrington's whiskey, and
we did the rest."

"Well, what was our intelligence doing--sleeping?" Keaveney demanded
angrily.

"No, they were writing reports for your civil administration blokes to
stuff in the wastebasket, and being called mailed-fist-and-rattling-saber
alarmists for their pains." He turned away from Keaveney. "Barney, where's
Dirk Prinsloo?"

"Aboard his ship. He hitched a ride to the airport with Jarman, when
he