The foundation of the civilization of Greater Sinab was shattered because women abruptly ceased to be merely inferior animals. The defenses of that one planet were non-existent, and even the four ships just taken off went down recklessly to the seemingly unharmed cities--to land with monstrous crashes and every man in them helpless. The ships were out of action for as long as the broadcast should continue. But the fleet of Ades rendezvoused at Ades, and again put out into space. They divided now and attacked the subjugated planets. They had no weapons save the devices which every government in the Galaxy used. It was as if they fought a war with the night-sticks of policemen. But the disciplinary circuit which made governments absolute, by the most trivial of modifications became a device by which men were barred from cities, and therefore from government. All government ceased. Active warfare by the Empire of Sinab became impossible. Space-yards, armories, space-ships grounded and space-ships as they landed from the void--every facility for war or rule in an empire of twenty planets became useless without the killing of a single man and without the least hope of resistance. Only--a long while since, a squadron of Sinabian warships had headed out for Ades as a part of the program of expansion of the Empire. It had lifted from Sinab Two--then the thriving, comfortable capital of the Empire--and gone into overdrive on its mission. The distance to be covered was something like thirty light-years. Overdrive gave a speed two hundred times that of light, which was very high speed indeed, and had sufficed for the conquest of a galaxy, in the days when the human race was rising. But even thirty light-years at that rate required six weeks of journeying in the stressed space of overdrive. During those six weeks, of course, there could be no communication with home base. So the squadron bound for Ades had sped on all unknowing and unconscious, while Khiv Five was beamed and all its men killed and while the _Starshine_ had essayed a return journey from the Second Galaxy and then sped crazily to universes beyond men's imagining and returned, and while the midget fleet of Ades wrecked the Empire in whose service the travelers set out to do murder. The journeying squadron--every ship wrapped in the utter unapproachability of faster-than-light travel--was oblivious to all that had occurred. Its separate ships came out of overdrive some forty million miles from the solitary planet Ades, lonesomely circling its remote small sun. The warships of Sinab had an easier task in keeping together on overdrive than ships of the _Starshine_ class on transmitter-drive, but even so they went back to normal space forty million miles from their destination--two seconds' journey on overdrive--to group and take final counsel.