k walls of this
warehouse.

At the little door set in the center of the front wall there was a
sentry. He was grumbling to himself about having to do such a damn-fool
thing as guard a warehouse when there wasn't an enemy within light years
of the building.

He was wrong. And the enemy killed him.

Inside the warehouse, there being no lock on the door, Aron groped about
in the stuffy, pitch blackness till he came to a little fire station set
against a wall. There was a locker containing an insulated suit, hatchet
and other fire-fighting equipment, at this station.

He donned the fire-fighting suit and helmet and went to one end of the
building that was walled-off. In this separate room was the emergency
power supply for the base. There was a turbine with a fuel supply and
tiers of high-voltage storage batteries. There was also a fire hose on
one wall because of the presence of the combustible turbine fuel.

* * * * *

Aron had to pause for a minute to gather his thoughts. He had come so
far, so fast through the first steps of his plan and now he was ready
for the final action.

What Aron now needed for success was three things. Sulphuric acid and
salt water in large quantities and the right wind.

The first two had been thoughtfully provided by the People's Republic.
The third was a matter of waiting. The land on Kligor was dry. What
little water supplies were available weren't enough to maintain a base
the size the garrison had built. Since the ocean was only fifteen miles
from the valley where the base was located, it was a simple matter to
pipe in water.

One of the mammoth cargo ships had been loaded with six inch flexible
hose, tougher than steel, wound on drums. It was a matter of a day's
work to fly the ship slowly from the ocean to the base, laying out
fifteen miles of this flexible pipe on the ground.

It was salt water, then, that was received at the base. Most of it was
filtered through a chemical plant in the valley to make fresh water, but
it was salt water that was available to the fire hoses for the needed
quantity and pressure.

The emergency power supply and the fire hoses were only normal safety
precautions, but now, in the hands of the Traitor, they became deadly
weapons.

By pushing the lever that removed the lids from the storage batteries
automatically for inspection he had sulphuric acid--for the law of
conservation of energy said that man had achieved