"Sinab Two!" snorted the Mayor of Steadheim. "That's the danger! We know! When a man becomes a criminal anywhere he's sent to us. In the First Galaxy a man with brains usually becomes a criminal. A free man always does! So we've known for a long while there were empires in the making. You heard that, Kim Rendell!" "Yes, I've heard that," agreed Kim. So he had, but only vaguely. His own home planet, Alphin Three, was ostensibly a technarchy, ruled by men chosen for their aptitude for public affairs by psychological tests and given power after long training. Actually it was a tyranny, ruled by members of the Prime Council. Other planets were despotisms or oligarchies and many were kingdoms, these days. Every possible form of government was represented in the three hundred million inhabited planets of the First Galaxy. But every planet was independent and in all--by virtue of the disciplinary circuit--the government was absolute and hence tyrannical. Empires, however, were something new. On Ades, Kim barely heard that three were in process of formation. "One's the Empire of Greater Sinab," snorted the mayor, "and we've just heard how it grows!" "Surprise attacks, no doubt," said Kim, "through matter-transmitters." "We'd not worry if that were all!" snapped the mayor. "It's vastly worse! You know the old fighting-beams?" "I know them!" said Kim grimly. 2 _The Deadly Beams_ He did. They were the most terrible weapons ever created by men. They had ended war by making all battles mass suicide for both sides. They were beams of the same neuronic frequencies utilized in the disciplinary circuits which kept men enslaved. But where the disciplinary circuits were used in place of police and prisons and merely tortured the individual citizen to whom they were tuned--wherever he might be upon a planet--the fighting-beams killed indiscriminately. They induced monstrous, murderous currents in any living tissue containing the amino-chains normally a part of human flesh. They were death-rays. They killed men and women and children alike in instants of shrieking agony. But no planet could be attacked from space if it was defended by such beams. It was two thousand years since the last attempt at attack from space had been made. That fleet had been detected far out and swept with fighting-beams and every living thing in the attacking ships died instantly. So planets were independent of each other. But when space-ships ceased to be used the fighting-beams were needless and ultimately were scrapped or put into museums. "Somebody," the mayor said wrathfully, "has changed those beams! They're not tuned to animal tissue in general any more! They're tuned to male tissue. To blood containing male hormones, perhaps! And Sinab Two is building an empire with 'em! We found out only two weeks ago!