derground had convinced the people of the truth. They were ready to
rise up and throw off the yoke of Candar. There was conflict between
the government and the religion. The people would not stand any
further reduction in their living standards. Two-thirds of the gross
product went for armaments now, and the amount was steadily
increasing.

At last Thane banged the desk until they had all stopped talking. He
looked at them a moment in silence. "All right. You've got your
gadgets. You've got your political theory. You've even got your
strategy. But there hasn't been an atom's worth of tactics in anything
you've said, any of you. I think you're badly in need of some
engineering for your revolution."

Astrid walked over and looked up into his eyes. "That's about the way
it is, Roger. And that's why we need you so badly."

That was when they began going into details. Strength of the
underground, possible allies, weaknesses of Candar.... Thane was
beginning to see the picture, and the tremendous obstacles to be
overcome, when a buzzer sounded and a red light over the door blinked
DANGER ... DANGER ... DANGER....

IV

Pyuf ran over to a cabinet on the wall by the fire. Thane saw there
were several dials and a visiscreen. As Pyuf twisted the dials he
spoke rapidly over his shoulder to Thane. "We're quite isolated here.
The house belongs to the old boy you met in the lab. He's been checked
for security by Candar so we figured we were safe here. There's a
detection screen about a kilometer hour from the house, and we have a
force screen we can use as a last resort. Of course, we'd have to
abandon this place once we did use it. Candar's detectors would pick
it up right away."

The visiscreen came into focus and Pyuf turned the perimeter dial till
it lined up with the degree mark on the disturbance indicator. Nine
figures appeared, advancing toward the house. Three were short and
squat--not over a meter and a half in height. They walked with the
peculiar slouch of the Darzent entity in its humanoid phase. The other
six were the Darzent robot infantry. Two and a half meters high,
impervious to any hand weapon, with built-in blasters and the Darzent
version of the Stoltz gun. Their ship was in the background. It had
the outlines of an ordinary atmosphere jet of medium size, but there
were alterations which made Thane suspect that it had been refitted
for deep space, with at least the finite drive, and probably FTL.

Than