ng the
iron-gray hair of the man who stood there. His shoulders almost blocked
the window, for he had the body of a fighting man, one, moreover, in
good condition. His short-clipped mustache rode with an air of dignity
above his thin, rugged mouth.

His eyes looked out on the city, but did not see it. Through his brain
went the vision of a dream that was coming true. His dream spun its
fragile net about the planets of the Solar System, about their moons,
about every single foot of planetary ground where men had gone to build
and create a second homeland--the mines of Mercury and the farms of
Venus, the pleasure-lands of Mars and the mighty domed cities on the
moons of Jupiter, the moons of Saturn and the great, cold laboratories
of Pluto.

Power was the key, supplied by the accumulators owned and rented by
Interplanetary Power. A monopoly of power. Power that Venus and Mercury
had too much of, must sell on the market, and that the other planets and
satellites needed. Power to drive huge spaceships across the void, to
turn the wheels of industry, to heat the domes on colder worlds. Power
to make possible the life and functioning of mankind on hostile worlds.

In the great power plants of Mercury and Venus, the accumulators were
charged and then shipped out to those other worlds where power was
needed. Accumulators were rented, never sold. Because they belonged at
all times to Interplanetary Power, they literally held the fate of all
the planets in their cells.

A few accumulators were manufactured and sold by other smaller
companies, but they were few and the price was high. Interplanetary saw
to that. When the cry of monopoly was raised, Interplanetary could point
to these other manufacturers as proof that there was no restraint of
trade. Under the statute no monopoly could be charged, but the cost of
manufacturing accumulators alone was protection against serious
competition from anyone.

Upon a satisfactory, efficient power-storage device rested the success
or failure of space travel itself. That device and the power it stored
were for sale by Interplanetary ... and, to all practical purposes, by
Interplanetary only.

Accordingly, year after year, Interplanetary had tightened its grip upon
the Solar System. Mercury was virtually owned by the company. Mars and
Venus were little more than puppet states. And now the government of the
Jovian confederacy was in the hands of men who acknowledged Spencer
Chambers as