Kram raked in his loot. There was some deliberation concerning the continuation of the game. Idly, Kram counted the credits he had bluffed the colonel out of. Or, which he more than suspected, he had counter-bluffed the colonel out of.
The G-ray, Xenthl had explained to the men of Earth when he announced to them that they would be given one year in which to reorganize their governments in conformation with his dictates and in subservience to his rule and under the sovereignty of himself and his people, operated on the practical principles of a theory once promulgated, but never put to work before his death, by an Earth scientist of the 20th century. The Earthman had called it a "general theory of gravitation." The Sirians had their own name for it, and when applied in weapon form, the result was the G-ray—a weapon capable of completely nullifying the forces of gravitational cohesion within any and all molecular structures. Result? Complete and instantaneous disintegration of any material object, solid, gaseous or liquid, at which it was aimed. Within its scope, the forces of what Xenthl termed "molecular gravity" fell completely to zero. Nothing exploded. It just stopped being, all at once.
There had been demonstrations. Three demonstrations, and the world was more than convinced.
Xenthl had demonstrated his weapon on three of his own no-longer-needed laboratories. Situated in their sterile patches of blistering desert, they had each covered areas about the size of three large earth cities. With the complete operation telecast to all the world, and with earth scientists watching at respectful distances in observation posts in one of which Xenthl himself had been present, the Sirian dictator had given the commands for his G-batteries to fire. They fired at ranges twice those of Earth's best atomic cannon.
The lab-cities, each hit with a single blast, vanished one, two, three.
The places where the labs had been were minutely examined by Earth's men of science for weeks afterward.
Not a trace. Of anything. Just sand. The sand, Xenthl explained, was kept as much below the ray-field as possible—digging holes for miles into the planet wasn't, after all, necessary, and it would've wasted power....
Where there may have been signs of disbelief, Xenthl had only to infer that, really, did the credulous ones of Earth suppose that the Lords of Iaaro had disclosed all their great secrets of science when they had landed? Would they have divulged the very secret of their proposed conquest?
The brave man with the club facing an enemy with an atomic rifle knows he is licked. At such a point, Kram reflected, heroism would be a little silly; hysterical anger would be useless.