uns
and tanks are being loaded on your contragravity vehicles."

* * * * *

When the Stolgonian embassy was seized by the Space Vikings, the
ambassador asked to be taken at once to their leader. He had a
proposition: If the Space Vikings would completely disable the army
of Eglonsby and admit Stolgonian troops when they were ready to
leave, the invaders would bring with them ten thousand kilos of
gold. Trask affected to be very hospitable to the offer.

Stolgoland lay across a narrow and shallow sea from the State of
Eglonsby; it was dotted with islands, and every one of them was, in
turn, dotted with oil wells. Petroleum was what kept the aircraft
and ground-vehicles of Amaterasu in operation; oil, rather than
ideology, was at the root of the enmity between the two nations.
Apparently the Stolgonian espionage in Eglonsby was completely
deceived, and the reports Trask allowed the captive ambassador to
make confirmed the deception. Hourly the Eglonsby radio stations
poured out exhortations to the people to co-operate with the Space
Vikings, with an occasional lamentation about the masses of war
materials being taken. Eglonsby espionage in Stolgoland was
similarly active. The Stolgonian armies were being massed at four
seaports on the coast facing Eglonsby, and there was a frantic
gathering of every sort of ship available. By this time, any
sympathy that Trask might have felt for either party had evaporated.

The invasion of Stolgoland started the fifth morning after their
arrival over Eglonsby. Before dawn, the six pinnaces went in, making
a wide sweep around the curvature of the planet and coming in from
the north, two to each of the three gold-troves. They were detected
by radar, eventually but too late for any effective resistance to
be organized. Two were even taken without a shot; by mid-morning all
three had been blown open and the ingots and specie were being removed.

The four seaports from whence the Stolgonian invasion of Eglonsby
was to have been launched were neutralized by nuclear bombing.
Neutralized was a nice word, Trask thought; there was no echo in it
of the screams of the still-living, maimed and burned and blinded,
around the fringes of ground-zero. The _Nemesis_ and the _Space
Scourge_, from landing craft and from the ships themselves, landed
Eglonsby troops on Stolgonopolis. While they were sacking the city,
with all the usual atrocities, the Space Vikings were l