"Your un-knowledge is deeper than I bethought me," Kraft Gerding said, smiling, scooting a little wester on the cot. Orison moved one hips-breadth further to the west. "Very well," Kraft said. "As a primer, thus: my brother Dink ger-Dink, heir through accident of tradition to the Triple Crown of Empire; I, his elder, better brother; and our officers and exiles--these latter common criminals, marked for men's contempt with purple ears--constitute the XLIIth Subversion-and-Conquest Task Force of the Empire of Dink. This mighty Empire, for your information, lies some distance off in the southern skies of Earth." "How far off?" Orison asked. "As far," Kraft Gerding said, "as all your men since Adam have run in pursuit of beauty." He scooted further west. Orison made still further westering. "You come from some foreign planet?" she asked. "No longer foreign, my dear," Kraft said. "Our planet, our triple footstool, welcomes young Earth to share our ancient wisdom and relax under the shadow of our might." "And I, young Earth, tell you, Kraft Gerding, to go sail a saucer," Orison said. * * * * * Kraft Gerding stood up. "Come with me, my dear. I'll show you the greenery that establishes me as Emperor Apparent of the planet Earth." He strode to a steel door, took a key from his pocket, and unlocked it. "Behold!" he said, flinging the door open. Orison stepped into the basement room, a cube some fifty feet in each dimension. She found herself in a corridor between huge walls of bundled paper. Kraft Gerding, behind her, pried a packet from the wall and handed it to her. "This, my dear Orison, is the lever with which I'll over-turn the Earth," he said. The bundle was banded with a strip of paper bearing the legend, "$5,000 in 50's." Each bit of paper in the bundle bore the portrait of President U. S. Grant. "This room," Kraft Gerding said, "contains some four hundred million dollars in U.S. currency. I intend with this money, and as much more as I need, to subvert and purchase a nation. The United States will then be the beach-head for the world." "Counterfeits," Orison said. "But perfect counterfeits," Kraft said. "The paper was manufactured by the master-craftsmen of Chilif. The inks were compounded by the chemists of that same capital city of Empire. The plates were cut by twenty million engravers, the Microfabridae of the Storm-Planet, supervised by Elder Compassion, an ancient of the slothful race that inhabits the planet nearest our mother sun. This is but one of my treasuries. I have many such. There is the Threadneedle Room, filled with pounds-sterling, in ones, fives, fifties and hundreds. There are other rooms, boxes, trunks and trucks filled with all the currencies of Earth. I am ready now to purchase this planet from its owners. No violence, you see. Just subterfuge." "It's violence enough, to ruin a planet," Orison said. "It beats war," Kraft Gerding said, drawing on his cheroot.