ds of
Omans as you please to work at modernizing all the Oman ships you want
and doing anything else you say. Check?"

Sawtelle thought for a couple of minutes. "A few details, is all. But
that can be ironed out as we go along."

Both men worked then, almost unremittingly for six solid days; at the
end of which time both drew tremendous sighs of relief. They had done
everything possible for them to do. The defense of Ardvor was now
rolling at fullest speed toward its gigantic objective.

Then captain and director, in two Oman ships with fifty men and a
thousand Omans, leaped the world-girdling ocean to the mining operation
of the Stretts. There they found business strictly as usual. The
strippers still stripped; the mining mechs still roared and snarled
their inchwise ways along their geometrically perfect terraces; the
little carriers still skittered busily between the various miners and
the storage silos. The fact that there was enough concentrate on hand to
last a world for a hundred years made no difference at all to these
automatics; a crew of erector-mechs was building new silos as fast as
existing ones were being filled.

Since the men now understood everything that was going on, it was a
simple matter for them to stop the whole Strett operation in its
tracks. Then every man and every Oman leaped to his assigned job. Three
days later, all the mechs went back to work. Now, however, they were
working for the Ardans.

The miners, instead of concentrate, now emitted vastly larger streams of
Navy-Standard pelleted uranexite. The carriers, instead of one-gallon
cans, carried five-ton drums. The silos were immensely larger--thirty
feet in diameter and towering two hundred feet into the air. The silos
were not, however, being used as yet. One of the two Oman ships had been
converted into a fuel-tanker and its yawning holds were being filled
first.

The _Orion_ went back to Ardane and an eight-day wait began. For the
first time in over seven months Hilton found time actually to loaf; and
he and Temple, lolling on the beach or hiking in the mountains, enjoyed
themselves and each other to the full.

All too soon, however, the heavily laden tanker appeared in the sky over
Ardane. The _Orion_ joined it; and the two ships slipped into sub-space
for Earth.

* * * * *

Three days out, Hilton used his sense of perception to release the
thought-controlled blocks that had been holding all