The small scoutship slipped easily through the hatch of the Viagoni cruiser and spiralled down into the atmosphere of Vega IX. Aboard, Jim Lawrence rocked in his deceleration cradle and tried to form a strategy for landing. By the time the Viagoni medics had finished with him, he was the very image of a Vegan--thin and dark, sinister-looking, tight-faced. That might get him _into_ the Vegan base--but how was he going to get out? He shrugged his shoulders. _I'll worry about that when the time comes_, he told himself. Now, he waited while the remote-controlled scoutship brought him closer and closer to the planet below. Finally it dropped to the ground. He stepped out and found himself in the midst of a vast, bleak plain. About a half-mile to the east, a cluster of little buildings was evident--the upper portions, Illon had told him, of the fortified underground Vegan base. He crossed the plain at a quick trot and slipped into a group of silent Vegans who were coming out of one of the above-surface buildings and heading toward a shaft that apparently led downward into the base. They were clad in overalls, and looked like workers. None of them spoke to him as he joined their ranks. He moved along down into the shaft with them. A fantastic underground world opened before his eyes. Great lights overhead cast illumination on the scene. Buildings reared up ten, fifteen, twenty stories; massive machines pumped pistons back and forth, booming noisily. It was a gigantic base, a center for the conquest of the universe. And somewhere in the heart of all this--somewhere was Andsu Meero and the mindless body of Bette Bauer. If Meero had the chance to restore the girl's mind and drain from her the secret of the annihilating ray-- But he didn't want to think about that. He kept going with the group of workers he had fallen in with, and found that they were marching toward a squat, windowless building that was the center of a good deal of activity. The Vegans he was with were silent men, dark-faced and taciturn, and he was thankful for that. There was none of the genial camaraderie that might have been present between a bunch of Earthmen in a similar position. He followed them into the building, and discovered that it was a tool dispensary of some kind. Each man was marching up to a closet and taking forth something that looked like a large, heavy brush. Jim dropped back toward the end of the line and chewed at his lip. No doubt the tools would be apportioned one for each man in the squad, which meant they would be short one. And he didn't want the men he was with to suspect anything; he wanted to stay with them at least until he had formulated a more definite plan of action. He lingered at the back of the line, looking around. There was no one behind him. He reached out for the man just in front of him and whacked him across the throat with the edge of his hand.