It developed that three of the fields had shown activity. Not merely traces or flashes, but solid punctures showing the presence of a hard, tight beam. And those three punctures were in the same line; a line running straight out into inter-Galactic space. Kinnison took careful readings on the line, then stood motionless. Feet wide apart, hands jammed into pockets, head slightly bent, eyes distant, he stood there unmoving; thinking with all the power of his brain. "I want to ask three questions," the old Commandant of Cadets interrupted his cogitations finally. "Was Helmuth Boskone, or not? Have we got them licked, or not? What do we do next, besides the mopping up of those eighteen super-maulers?" "To all three the answer is 'I don't know'." Kinnison's face was stern and hard. "You know as much about the whole thing as I do--I haven't held back a thing that I even suspect. I did not tell you that Helmuth was Boskone; I said that everyone in any position to judge, including myself, was as sure that he was as one could be about anything that could not be proved. I firmly believed that he was. The presence of this communicator line, and the other stuff I have told you about, has destroyed that belief in my mind. However, we do not actually _know_ any more than we did before. It is no more certain now that Helmuth was _not_ Boskone than it was before that he _was_ Boskone. The second question ties in with the first, and so does the third--but I see that the mopping up has started." While von Hohendorff and Kinnison had been talking, Haynes had issued orders and the Grand Fleet, divided roughly and with difficulty into eighteen parts, went raggedly outward to surround the eighteen outlying fortresses. But, and surprisingly enough to the Patrol forces, the reduction of those hulking monsters was to prove no easy task. The Boskonians had witnessed the destruction of Helmuth's Grand Base. Their master plates were dead. Try as they would, they could get in touch with no one with authority to give them orders, with no one to whom they could report their present plight. Nor could they escape: the slowest mauler in the Patrol Fleet could have caught any one of them in space of minutes.