n, that's for
sure," somebody said. It was one of those feeble jokes at which
everybody laughs because nothing else is laughable about the
situation.

Finally, they found it, at the north pole, which was no colder than
anywhere else on the planet. First radiation leakage, the sort that
would come from a closed-down nuclear power plant. Then a modicum of
electrical discharge. Finally the telescopic screens picked up the
spaceport, a huge oval amphitheater excavated out of a valley
between two jagged mountain ranges.

The language in the command room was just as bad, but the tone had
changed. It was surprising what a wide range of emotions could be
expressed by a few simple blasphemies and obscenities. Everybody
who had been deriding Sharll Renner were now acclaiming him.

But it was lifeless. The ships came crowding in; air-locked
landing-craft full of space-armored ground-fighters went down.
Screens in the command room lit as they transmitted in views.
Depressions in the carbon-dioxide snow where the hundred-foot
pad-feet of ships' landing-legs had pressed down. Ranks of
cargo-lighters that had plied to and from other ships or orbit.
And, all around the cliff-walled perimeter, air-locked doors to
caverns and tunnels. A great many men, with a great deal of equipment,
had been working here in the estimated five or six years since
Andray Dunnan--or somebody--had constructed this base.

Andray Dunnan. They found his badge, the crescent, blue on black, on
things. They found equipment that Harkaman recognized as having been
part of the original cargo stolen with the _Enterprise_. They even
found, in his living quarters, a blown-up photoprint picture of
Nevil Ormm, draped in black. But what they did not find was a single
vehicle small enough to be taken aboard a ship, or a single scrap of
combat equipment, not even a pistol or a hand grenade.

Dunnan had gone, but they knew whither, and where to find him.
The conquest of Marduk had moved into its final phase.

* * * * *

Marduk was on the other side of the sun from Abaddon with
ninety-five million miles--close, but not inconveniently so, Trask
thought--to spare. Guatt Kirbey and the Mardukan astrogator who was
helping him made it within a light-minute. The Mardukan thought that
was fine; Kirbey didn't. The last microjump was aimed at the Moon of
Marduk, which was plainly visible in the telescopic screen. They
came out within a light-sec