f Industriana.

CHAPTER XXXII

_Departure_

Georg and Maida were very busy in Industriana; and now Elza and I were
admitted to their activities--Elza and I, with our new-found love and
happiness neglected for the greater thing, the welfare of the nation
upon which hinged the very safety of Venus itself; and Mars; and our own
fair Earth.

Industriana, greatest commercial and manufacturing center of Venus, had
been given over momentarily to the preparations for war. The _Rhaals_
had at last turned from industry to the conquest of Tarrano.
Preparations were almost completed; our armies were to start within a
very few times of sleep.

I had had no experience in warfare; but the history of our Earth had
told me much of it. The enlisting and training of huge armies of men;
arming them; artillery; naval and air forces; commissary and supplies; a
gigantic business organization to equip, move and maintain millions of
fighting men.

Ancient warfare! This--our modern way--was indeed dissimilar. It was,
from most aspects, simplicity itself. We had no need of men in great
numbers. I found something like a single thousand of men being organized
and trained. And equipped with weapons to outward aspects comparatively
simple.

On all the three worlds the age of explosives of the sort history
records, was long since passed. Electronic weapons--all basically the
same. And I found now that it was the power for them, developed,
transformed into its various characteristics and stored for individual
transportation and use, which was mainly engrossing Industriana.

I had opportunity, that first night, of meeting Geno-Rhaalton--the
present head of that famous Rhaalton line, for generations hereditary
leaders of their race.

We found him, this Geno-Rhaalton, in a secluded, somber little office of
black metallic walls, grey hangings and rug, a block of carved stone his
desk, and a few of the stiff-backed stone chairs, each with its single
prim cushion.

The office was beyond sight and sound of the busy city. His desk was
empty, save for the array of apparatus around its edges--the clicking
tabulators which recorded, sorted, analyzed and summarized for him every
minute detail with which the city was engaged.

Machines of business detail. We had them, of course, in the Inter-Allied
offices of Greater New York. I have seen our Divisional Director voice
into a mouthpiece the demand for some statistical summary computed up to
f