He wondered if he would be able to weather this crisis. Still he wrote swiftly, invisibly on the transparent plastic, and as he did so, the thought of Venus, great in its first bloom of advanced civilization, of Europa, transmuted into an Eden by the courage of its Terrans and the strange unearthly science of the Panadurs. If all else failed, he could seek sanctuary on either one of these two planets. Mars repelled him, none of that grim land for his weary bones. But if he had to flee, he meant to flee along with Perlac, and he had a score to settle before he went. When he had finished, he pressed a button, and a robot-proctor entered noiselessly, received instruction and as quietly disappeared. Bejamel knew that his robot would deliver the message in person, nothing could take that plastic message from him short of destruction. V "Tonight we attack!" Guerlan persisted uncompromisingly, but his eyes sought Perlac's and found confirmation in her swift smile. "I offer the counsel of daring--all or nothing!" A roar of approval greeted his words, the echoes dwindling down the series of subterranean caverns that formed a continental link in the bowels of Neptune and was used to shelter the army of scientists, technicians, analysts, coordinators, mechanics and workmen. They were now under Columbia's Fifth Level, and rising to the crysto-plast dome, each tier was now under the domination of the Irreconcilables. But Paulan, the Commander in Chief, arose in all the dignity of his great age. He frowned in disapproval, sighing before he spoke. "I fear too great an army has been assembled against us, Plastica, Telluria, Perdura, the eleven remaining cities will have to be conquered, and remember, since we captured Columbia with comparative ease while the Inner Circle's Army was engaged in destroying the caverns beneath Plastica, all the other cities swarm with Intermediates and the Scientists of the First and Second Circle, not to speak of those fiends of the Inner Circle themselves. We have converted millions through the use of the Ethero-Magnum, thanks to our loyal Perlac, who taught us to use it as the Inner Circle used it to condition the amnesiacs; we have paralyzed the Plastic Industry; destroyed the machinery for processing _Bagazo_ into the amnesiac drug, and we control all the stores of _Bagazo_. We have achieved the arming of thousands of our followers. Surely, that is a great victory. I feel that should be enough for the present; besides, the Inner Circle will want to come to terms with us."