"The _Skylark_ and the _Kondal_ answer that description and, while the evidence is far from conclusive, we shall assume as a working hypothesis that the _Skylark_ and the _Kondal_ did in fact attack and cut up a Fenachrone battleship fully as powerful as the one we are now in. That, as I do not have to tell you, is a disquieting thought. "If it is true, however, Seaton must have left the Earth shortly after we did. That idea squares up, because he could very well have had an object-compass on me--whose tracer, by the way, would have been cut by the Fenachrone screens, so we needn't worry about it, even if he did have it once. "Our second lead lies in the fact that he must have got the dope on the zone of force sometime between the time when we left the Earth and the time when he cut up the battleship. He either worked it out himself on Earth, got it en route, or else got it on Osnome, or at least somewhere in the Green System. If my theory is correct, he worked it out by himself, before he left the Earth. He certainly did not get it on Osnome, because they did not have it. "The third lead is the shortness of the period of time that elapsed between his battle with the Fenachrone warship and the destruction of their planet. "The fourth lead is the great advancement in ability shown; going as he did from the use of a zone of force as an offensive weapon, up to the use of some weapon as yet unknown to us that works _through_ defensive screens fully as powerful as any possible zone of force. "Now, from the above hypotheses, we are justified in concluding that Seaton succeeded in enlisting the help of some ultrapowerful allies in the Green System, on some planet other than Osnome--" "Why? I don't quite follow you there," put in Loring. "He didn't have this new stuff, whatever it is, when he met the battleship, or he would have used it instead of the dangerous, almost hand-to-hand fighting entailed by the use of a zone of force," DuQuesne declared flatly. "Therefore he got it some time after that, but before the big explosion; and you can take it from me that no one man worked out a thing that big in such a short space of time. It can't be done. He had help, and high-class help at that. "The time factor is also an argument in favor of the idea that he got it somewhere in the Green System--he didn't have time to go anywhere else. Also, the logical thing for him to do would be to explore the Green System first, since it has a very large number of planets, many of which undoubtedly are inhabited by highly advanced races. Does that make it clearer?" "I've got it straight so far," assented the aid. * * * * * "We must plan our course of action in detail before we leave this spot," DuQuesne decided. "Then we will be ready to start back for the Green System, to find out who Seaton's friends were and to persuade them to give us all the dope they gave him. Now pin your ears back and listen to this, every word of it.