The minutes passed slowly. He looked up, startled, as the excited voice of his secretary came to him, without the warning bell that should have preceded it. "Mr. Everson! There's been a massacre! The Hops--they've slaughtered thousands! It was completely unprovoked--" The tiny dot of the Pleasure Planet was almost touching the circumference of the Hop stronghold. He sighed, and dropped his pen. "They're not even waiting," said Ada, in a choked voice. "I thought we'd be spared this." "Spared! They meant to slaughter us from the beginning, and you only made things easier for them!" He tried to put his arm around her, but she shook it off. "You knew what would happen, George. I've seen too much--" It was only out of a corner of his eye that he saw her hand steal into the desk drawer and come out with the weapon. He leaped at her, twisting her arm with brutal efficiency. She cried out as she dropped the weapon, and then she covered her eyes, the tears flowing freely at last. And it was at that moment that everything happened. A blaze of light spread across the heavens from the Hop planet. It blotted out the moon and dazzled their eyes in one blinding flash. And then it was gone, and when their dazed eyes could see again, they saw that where there had been the Hop planet was nothing. Everson leaped to his row of visors. "We were right!" he shouted excitedly. "My God, how right we were!" And his fingers trembled as they swept across one button after another. "Clayton!" he barked. "Wipe out the Hop occupation troops in your sector. No, I haven't gone crazy. You have the equipment to do it with. Go ahead and do it. They won't get reinforcements. Djervas, get rid of the Hop troops in Sector C. Zalmette, Goran, Halkim--" He spoke so rapidly that the names became a blur of sound. But the orders were clear enough, and from the reports that began to come in, it was clear also that they were being carried out. Arthur came into the office. He had been near the Star Building when it happened, and tears were streaming down his face. "The people are crying in the streets," he said huskily. "All the announcers on all the communication systems seem to have gone crazy. But it's hard to believe. What happened, Dad? A nuclear explosion?" "There wasn't any explosion." "But we saw it with our own eyes!" "You don't know what you saw. That wasn't an explosion, it was a collapse. Remember, Arthur, what I told you of Hop science? That they had neglected what they regarded as theoretical and useless branches?" "You say their planet collapsed?"