In terms
comprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that all
this meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, that
they could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they worked
faithfully and obeyed orders they would be given everything they were
now receiving. Ravney had been shuttling troops about, dealing with the
sporadic outbreaks of disorder here and there: many of these had been
put down, and the rest died out after the telecast explaining the
situation.

In addition, some of Commander Douvrin's intelligence people had
discovered that the only source of fissionables and radioactives for the
planet was a complex of uranite mines, separation plants, refineries and
reaction-plants on the smaller of Aditya's two continents, Austragonia.
In spite of other urgent calls on his resources, Ravney landed troops to
seize these, and a party of engineers followed them down from the
_Empress Eulalie_ to make an inspection.

At lunch, Count Erskyll was slightly less intransigent on the subject of
the wage-employment proposals. No doubt some of his advisors had been
telling him what would happen if any appreciable number of Aditya's
labor-force stopped work suddenly, and the wave of uprisings that had
broken out before any public announcement had been made puzzled him. He
was also concerned about finding a suitable building for a proconsular
palace; the business of the Empire on Aditya could not be conducted long
from shipboard.

Going down to the Citadel that afternoon, they found the chief-freedmen
of the non-functional Chiefs of Management assembled in a large room on
the fifth level down. There was a cluster of big tables and
communication-screens and wired telephones in the middle, with smaller
tables around them, at which freedmen in variously colored gowns sat.
The ones at the central tables, a dozen and a half, all wore
chief-slaves' white gowns.

Trevannion and Erskyll and Patrique Morvill and Lanze Degbrend joined
these; subordinates guided the rest of the party--a couple of Ravney's
officers and Erskyll's numerous staff of advisors and specialists--to
distribute themselves with their opposite numbers in the Mastership.
Everybody on the Adityan side seemed uneasy with these strange
hermaphrodite creatures who were neither slaves nor Lords-Master.

"Well, gentlemen," Count Erskyll began, "I suppose you have been
informed by your former Lords-Master of how relations between