Then, suddenly, came the years of spaceflight and the expanding frontiers. Luna was passed. Mars and Venus and the Jovian Moons felt the tread of living beings for the first time since the dawn of time. The larger asteroids were taken and even the cold moonlets of Saturn and Uranus trembled under the blast of Terran rockets. But the Iron Curtain still existed. It was extended out into the gulf of space, an intangible wall of fear and suspicion. Thus was born the Wall Decade. Jaq Merril was made for that epoch. Ever in human history there are those who profit from the stupidity of their fellows. Jaq Merril so profited. He dredged up the riches of space and took them for his own. And his weapon was man's fear of his brothers. * * * * * It was in Yakki, down-canal from the Terran settlement at Canalopolis, that Merril's plan was born. His ship, the _Arrow_, stood on the red sands of Syrtis Major, waiting for a payload to the Outer System. It stood among a good many like it: the _Moonmaid_, the _Gay Lady_, the _Argonaut_, and my own vessel, the _Starhound_. We, the captains, had gathered in the Spaceman's Rest--a tinkling gin-mill peopled with human wrecks and hungry-eyed, dusty-skinned women who had come out to Mars hoping for riches and had found only the same squalor they had left behind. I remember the look in Merril's eyes as he spoke of the treasures of space that would never be ours, of the gold and sapphires, the rubies and unearthly gems of fragile beauty and great price. All the riches of the worlds of space, passing through our hands and into the vaults of the stay-at-homes who owned our ships and our very lives. It seemed to me that Merril suffered as though from physical pain as he spoke of riches. He was nothing if not rapacious. Greedy, venal, ruthless. All of that. "Five of us," he said in a hard voice, "Captains all--with ships and men. We carry the riches of the universe and let it slip through our fingers. What greater fools could there be?" Oh, he was right enough. We had the power to command in our hands without the sense to grasp it firmly and take what we chose. "And mark you, my friends," Merril said, "A wall has been built around Mars. A wall that weakens rather than strengthens. A wonderful, stupid, wall...." He laughed and glanced around the table at our faces, flushed with wine and greed. "With all space full of walls," he said softly, "Who could unite against us?" The question struck home. I thought of the five ships standing out there on the rusty desert across the silted canal. Five tall ships--against the stars. We felt no kinship to those at home who clung to creature comforts while we bucketed among the stars risking our lives and more. We, the spacemen, had become a race apart from that of the home planet. And Merril saw this in our faces that night so long ago, and he knew that he had spoken our thoughts. Thus was born the Compact.