Kim wrestled with the problem while Dona went about in the world of women. There was something odd about her in the eyes of women of Khiv Five. Their faces were unlike the faces of the women of a normal world. On a world with men and women, all women wear masks. Their thoughts are unreadable. But where there are no men, masks are useless. The women of Khiv Five saw plainly that Dona was unlike them, but they were willing to talk to her. She came back to the _Starshine_ as Kim reached a state of complete bewilderment. Ades could not have been destroyed. But it had vanished. Even if shattered, its fragments could not have been moved so far or so fast that they could no longer be detected. But they were undiscoverable. The thing was impossible on any scale of power conceivable for humans to use. But it had happened. So Kim paced back and forth and bit his nails until Dona returned. "We can take off, Kim," she said quietly. She locked the inner airlock door as if shutting out something. She twisted the fastening extra tight. Her face was pale. "What about Ades?" asked Kim. "They had matter-transmission to it from here, too," said Dona. "You remember, the original transmitter on Ades was one-way only. It would receive but not send. Some new ones were built after the war with Sinab, though. And this planet's communication with Ades cut off just when ours did, thirty-six hours ago. None of the other twenty planets had communication with it either. Something happened, and on the instant everything stopped." "What caused it?" Kim asked, but Dona paid no attention. "Take off, Kim," she said. "Men are marching out of the matter-transmitter. Marching, I said, Kim! Armed men, marching as soldiers with machine-mounted heavy weapons. Somebody knows Ades can't protect its own any more and invaders must be crowding in for the spoils. I'm--afraid, Kim, that Ades has been destroyed and our planets are part of a tyrant's empire now." Later, the _Starshine_ swooped down from the blue toward the matter-transmitter on Khiv Five. Serried ranks of marching figures were tramping out of the transmitter's silvery, wavering film. In strict geometric rows they marched, looking neither to the right nor to the left. They were a glittering stream, moving rhythmically in unison, proceeding to join an already-arrived mass of armed men already drawn up in impressive array. Racing toward the high arch of the transmitter with air screaming about the _Starshine's_ hull, Kim saw grimly that the figures were soldiers, as Dona had said. He had never before seen a soldier in actual life, but pictures and histories had made them familiar enough.