five to believe it. Not less than twenty altogether to report
and get authority to fire. The Huks were a fighting race and presumably
organized, so they'd have a chain of command and decisions would be made
at the top. Army stuff, or navy. Not like the cops, where everybody knew
both the immediate and final purposes of any operation in progress, and
could act without waiting for orders.

It should be not less than thirty seconds before a firing key made
contact down below. As a matter of history, years ago the Huks had used
eighty-gravity rockets with tracking-heads and bust-bombs on them. These
Huks would hardly be behind the others in equipment. And back then, too,
Huks kept their rocket missiles out in orbit where they could flare into
eighty-gee acceleration without wasting time getting out to where an
enemy was. In their struggle against the cops two generations ago the
Huks had had to learn that fighting wasn't all drama and heroics. The
cops had taken the glamour out when they won. So the Huks wouldn't waste
time making fine gestures now. The squad ship had appeared off their
planet. It had not transmitted a code identification-signal the instant
it came out of overdrive. The Huks were hiding from the cops, so they'd
shoot.

"Hop on past," commanded Sergeant Madden, "the instant I jerk the
ejector lanyard. Don't fool around. Over the pole will do."

Patrolman Willis set the hop-timer. Twenty seconds. Twenty-two. Three.
Four.

"Hop!" said Sergeant Madden. As he spoke, he jerked the lanyard.

Before the syllable was finished, Patrolman Willis pressed hard on the
overdrive button. There came the always-nauseating sensation of going
into overdrive combined with the even more unpleasant sensation of
coming out of it. The squad ship was somewhere else.

A vast, curving whiteness hung catercornered in the sky. It was the
planet's icecap, upside down. Patrolman Willis had possibly cut it a
trifle too fine.

"Right," said the sergeant comfortably. "Now swing about to go back and
meet the _Aldeb_. But wait."

The stars and the monstrous white bowl reeled in their positions as the
ship turned. Sergeant Madden felt that he could spare seconds, here. He
ignored the polar regions of Sirene IV, hanging upside down to rearward
from the squad ship. Even a planetary alarm wouldn't get polar-area
observers set to fire in much less than forty seconds, and there'd have
to be some lag in response to instrument reports. It wou