of Allied Mongolia was dead--murdered under similar circumstances. And
ten minutes later from Mombozo, Africa, the blacks reported their leader
killed while asleep in his official residence.

[Footnote 2: Tokyo-Yokohama, Japan.]

The Earth momentarily was without leadership!

I was struggling to get accounts of these successive disasters out over
our audiophones. Above my desk, in a duplicating mirror from
Headquarters, I could see that at the palace of Mombozo a throng of
terrified blacks were gathered. It was night there--a blurred scene of
flashing lights and frightened, milling people.

Greys--next to me--had a mirror tuned to Tokyohama. The sun there was
shining upon almost a similar scene of panic. Black and yellow men--on
opposite sides of the Earth. And between them our white races in
turmoil. Outside my own window I could hear the shouts of the crowd that
jammed the Twentieth Level.

Greys leaned toward me. "Seven o'clock, Jac. You've got the arrival of
the Venus mail. Don't overlook it ... By the code, man, your hands are
shaking! You're white as a ghost!"

The Venus mail; I had forgotten it completely.

"Greys, I wonder if it'll get in."

He stared at me strangely. "You're thinking that, too. I told the
British National Announcer it was a Venus plot. He laughed at me. Those
Great Londoners can't see their fingers before them. He said, 'That's
your lurid sense of newscasting.'"

Venus plot! I remembered my impressions of the Venus man who was beside
me when our President fell.

Greys was back at his work. I swept the south shore of Eastern Island[3]
with my finder, and picked up the image of the inter-planetary landing
stage, at which the Venus mail was due to arrive. I could see the blaze
of lights plainly; and with another, closer focus I caught the huge
landing platform itself. It was empty.

[Footnote 3: Now Long Island.]

The station-master there answered my call. He had no word of the mail.

"Try the lookout at Table Mountain," he advised me. "They may be coming
down that way.... Sure I'll let you know.... What a night! They say that
in Mediterrania--"

But I cut off; it was no time to chat with him. Table Mountain,
Capetown, had no word of the mail. Then I caught the Yukon Station. The
mail flyer had come down on the North Polar side--was already crossing
Hudson Bay.

At 8:26 it landed on Eastern Island. A deluge of Venus despatches
overwhelmed me. But the mail news, before I could