nd of weeping among
our women.

* * * * *

Two months after that engagement, a single assault-boat returned to
Base. It was the lone survivor of the _Lady's_ landing party. By some
miracle, the three men aboard had escaped the holocaust. They had landed
and been captured and then they had fought their way free and into the
void once more. They were half-dead from starvation and exposure, but
they had brought word to Merril that the wall that had so long protected
us was crumbling.

Merril sought me out, his lean hard face grim and set.

"There was a Russian among the Americans on Hyperion," he said.

"A prisoner?" It was my hope that spoke so, not my sure knowledge of
what was to come.

Merril shook his head slowly. "A technician. They developed the beam
that killed the _Argonaut_ and the _Lady_--together." His voice was
harsh and bleak. Then suddenly he laughed. "We've touched them," he
said, "Touched them on their tender spot--their purses." He bowed low,
filled with bitter mockery. "Behold the diplomats, the men who are
accomplishing the impossible!"

And I knew that his words spelt doom. Doom for the Compact and for the
Wall Decade that was our life.

Yet we did not stint. In that year we raided Dione, Io, Ganymede, and
even the American naval Base on Callisto. We gutted six Russian and four
American rockets filled with treasure. And we ventured sunward as far as
the moons of Mars.

We dared battles with patrol ships and won. We killed the destroyer
_Alexei Tolstoi_ off Europa and we shattered an American monitor over
Syrtis itself, and watched the wreckage rain down on Yakki, the place
where the Compact was born.

And we lost the _Moonmaid_.

* * * * *

The radio told us the story. Other new weapons were being developed
against us, and here and there American and Russian spacecraft were seen
in company for the first time in the history of the Age of Space.
Convoys were formed from ships of both flags to protect spatial commerce
from the imagined "great fleet" of the Compact. None knew that only the
_Arrow_ and the _Starhound_, small ships, weary ships, were left to face
the slowly combining might of Earth.

And then at last, the pickings--growing slimmer always--diminished to
the vanishing point. Merril stood before us and gave the assembled crews
their option.

"The treasure hunt is over," our captain told us, "And those who wish
may