"Not at the present time. That will come as necessary. But let's close this. Time is important; Mephisto will be mobilizing even as we are."
"May I use the official wire?" asked Kane. "And one more item. What about secrecy?"
"A thing this big can not be kept a secret," answered Donigan. "We haven't enough men and materiel to successfully attack a militant planet. Therefore we must recruit men, and get the manufacturers to produce supplies. Mars—I believe—will sit tight and wait until we take the initiative. A move on their part will hinge upon our success or failure on Mephisto. Break it wide and big, Kane. And send it out on the interplanetary service. Mars may as well have something to think of. We know she will never attack Terra as long as the Terran Space Patrol maintains a fleet. Mars is too small and, therefore, too easy to cover compared to Terra. Go ahead and break your story, Kane."
Kane was as good as his word. It hit the newsstands that evening, in three-inch headlines. They said nothing more than the hourly news-broadcasts for news, but Kane's writers had done an excellent job in building Maynard up as the man of the hour.
And then the report of the attack followed. Guy Maynard, commanding the Orionad, had been fired upon without provocation as he attempted to run in close to the new planet for photographic records. The bursting of the torpedoes was pictured in the newscasts in all their blasting flame, and the pictures suffered nothing from the film record.
Guy Maynard was then called upon to face the iconoscopes. He looked into the faces of three hundred billion Terrans and told them simply and forcefully that Mephisto's military action prevented any peaceful negotiations, and that it was certain that they were even now preparing to maintain their isolation.
"And," he finished, "we know that isolation can not be defended. To preserve isolation, the enemy must be destroyed on his home base. We can expect attack from Mephisto unless we tackle them first. And to take the battle from Terra to them, we need men, material, and all the myriad of things that follow."
The recruiting posters hit the public next, and all of the machinery of war was started. And though it rolled in the super-slow gear at first, it would pick up momentum as time went on. All that the Patrol needed was a backlog to replace losses, and with that assured within the next few months, the mighty fleet of the Terran Space Patrol assembled at Sahara Base, formed a complex space lattice, and drove outward towards Mephisto.