For a time after his son left, Everson worked steadily. The surrender wasn't going as smoothly as he would have liked. Even those who had accepted the numerous vacant posts had no heart in the work, and whether through carelessness or through deliberate sabotage, many of the minor points of the agreement with the Hops were in danger of being violated. If Everson could help it, there were going to be no violations that would give the Hops an excuse to use military force. He checked over the details of what was being done in the asteroid belt, and found, as he had suspected would happen, that the largest asteroid base of all had been left out of the list to be turned over to the Hops. He spoke personally to the governor of the Asteroid Group. "Clayton? Ever hear of Base AZ?" "Of course, Mr. Everson." "So have the Hops. They're very sensitive, and I'd hate to upset them by pretending that it doesn't exist. Turn it over to a Hop crew, and see that it's brought directly to their planet." "Yes, Mr. Everson," said Clayton dully. * * * * * During the night, his wife visored the Star Building. All through the period of the negotiations she had said nothing, but the long years of living together had enabled Everson to guess her thoughts, and he knew that she shared Arthur's views that everyone responsible for turning Earth over to the Hops was guilty of treason--and that she made an exception only in the case of her husband. What would have been an act of betrayal in someone else was only a mistake in judgment in George Everson, and this despite the fact that for almost thirty years she had maintained proudly that her husband never made mistakes. She had deliberately involved herself in a tangle of face-saving inconsistencies for which he was deeply grateful. If she had turned against him as Arthur had done, and as even his own brothers had done, his life would have been altogether intolerable. Even as it was, he was none too happy at her expression. "George," she said, from a distance of two thousand miles, "the Hops are arriving. Have you seen them?" "I can get a direct military view. Just a moment." A touch of one of the buttons on his desk brought the picture to the military screen in front of him. The sun was just rising, and in the early dawn, the Hop craft was barely visible as it hovered high overhead. Occasional glints from something in the air revealed that they had let down a transparent ladder. Down this ladder were climbing rows of Hops, perceptible only as tiny dots near the top, becoming larger as they neared the ground. To the onlookers from below it seemed as if the Hops were climbing down out of the sky on thin air. "I have the picture, Ada. They're the occupation crew." "They're going to govern our own district?" "That's right," he said gruffly. "There aren't many of them, George. And we have a large military force near-by. If you gave the word, we could wipe them out."