"XII REPORTING. GREATER CALIDAO ABSOLUTELY IN OUR POWER. INDUSTRIAL SECTIONS SHOULD FALL BY DAWN. BOTRODUS IS IN SAFE FOR KAA WHERE SPACESTATION HAS RESISTED ALL ATTACKS. SEND SHIPS OF YOUR STATION PILOTED BY MARTIAN GROUP IX FOR IMMEDIATE ATTACK ON KAA. UPON DEPARTURE DESTROY ALL GUN EMPLACEMENTS LEST THEY BE RECAPTURED BEFORE THE ADVENT." The messages were dated scarcely ten minutes before. They must have been completed directly after Cravens had called the Embassy. But who had sent the first and received the second? There was only one Vron at Certagarni. It couldn't be he; he was loyal to the Legion. Perplexedly Frederix turned towards the inner room. Simultaneously a voice cut across the silence: "Looking for someone, Lieutenant?" Slowly he turned to confront Captain Meevo of the Defense Squadron--Meevo of whom he had thought but seconds past. "Yes, sir. What does this mean? Where are the men?" Meevo's thin, haughty face twisted cruelly. "The men have been taken care of; and this means that the old regime is going out; that a new race shall rule all of this system when the Legion returns from Sirius!" "A new race?" "Yes. Mine, the Vrons, true blood of Alpha Centauri--" Frederix could sense again the mystic alien strength of this man who had joined the Legion years ago during the Liberation; that subtle magnetism at which he had so often wondered, which kept him now from plunging recklessly into that leveled weapon. "And just how do you propose doing this?" "First, internal revolt, the rekindling of the old fires of worldly and national prejudice by a few well-ordered murders and the wholesale destruction of the spacestations. Even now my good friend Manuel Onupari has a ship waiting in Calidao, waiting to be loaded with _seedrona_ from Jethe's munitions plant which will blast every station on Earth. Tomorrow night we will put that ship into its orbit. "But you shall only see the beginning here, Frederix. Now be so kind as to go out to the control turret." Slowly the young ordnance engineer turned and walked out through the glassite tunnel to the turret overlooking the fortress. His heart was hammering madly and his slender hands nervously clenching and unclenching. He forced himself to speak: "And this Advent. What of that?" "Three years ago an Armada left Centauri, two thousand light ships armed, as you earthmen say, to the teeth. Three more years and they will be here; and a system ruined by internal revolt will lie helpless for conquest!" "God!" burst Frederix. "Call on your God, Earthman, and I will call on mine to speed those mighty ships!" Frederix forced himself to stop that mad desire to whirl about, to charge Meevo with bare hands. For that would be certain, horrible death with burning disruption in his vitals. Now he glimpsed Captain Marlin's huddled, ray-ribboned body lying near the smashed controls within the tower. Close by Lieutenant Gorman lay in hideous death.