The days that followed were eternities to the little group left stranded on Vulcan Base. Nerves were taut and tempers were short. Every man there, as well as the two women, realized that their very lives as well as the fate of the System depended on the day of Luhor's return from the asteroid. Mark had aroused the men too well. They were impatient and restless. They didn't want their freedom handed to them on a silver platter, they wanted to fight for it. Aladdian had said Luhor would be back soon--very soon. Mark questioned her about it. "Even with that fast Spacer," Aladdian replied, "it will take him several days to get out to that asteroid and back again. Cynthia tells me her father sent a crew of men there a month ago, to assemble the new Spacers. Luhor will undoubtedly win them all to his side, and bring half of them back to continue the work here. Cynthia says--" "Cynthia seems to have confided a lot in you!" Mark exclaimed with a sudden, unexplainable suspicion. Aladdian smiled wearily, and slowly shook her head. "You are demoted back to the lower order, Mark Denning," she said with a hint of the same mockery Mark had known in the Swamp. "Cynthia Marnik needs our help now. She only carried out her father's orders, but now that the dynasty is crumbling about her ears, she's bewildered and a little frightened. Something else has happened to her too, for the first time in her life." "What's that?" "Never mind," Aladdian said enigmatically. "Ernest Carston knows. It will turn out all right. Meanwhile you had better put the men here to work, it will help pass the time. Goodbye ... Mark." Like an azure-winged elf she hurried back to the laboratory where she spent most of her time. That was the first instance Mark could remember when Aladdian had called him by his first name, and he liked it. He called the men together and assigned them to posts at the furnaces, where they continued to turn out the metal that would be fashioned into the super rocket-tubes. Earth was massing its fleet and Venus was mobilizing. Mark realized that if a truce could not be called, they would need every one of the outlaw Spacers on the asteroid, and others as well. He took a few of the men with him to the arsenal, where they began to get every available weapon in readiness for the Tri-Planetary showdown that was sure to come. * * * * * "Tell the men to stop work," Aladdian said to Mark two days later, "then bring them to the laboratory. They have as much right as we to know what is happening. I have been working on the ethero-magnum sender, and I shall try to contact both Venus and Earth."