"All right. I'm sending Aldebaran to Kankad's, to pick up more reenforcements for you."
"We can use them! And with Aldebaran, we ought to be able to take the offensive against the city by this time tomorrow. Anything else?"
"Not at the moment. I'll see about getting Aldebaran sent off, now."
Leaving the booth, he heard, above the clatter of communications-machines and hubbub of voices, Jules Keaveney arguing contentiously. Evidently Colonel Cheng-Li's efforts to drag the Resident out of his despondency had been an excessive success.
"But it's crazy! Not just here; everywhere on Uller!" Keaveney was saying. "How did they do it? They have no telecast equipment."
"You have me stopped, Jules," Mordkovitz was replying. "I know a lot of rich geeks have receiving sets, but no sending sets."
The pattern that had been tantalizing von Schlichten took visible shape in his mind. For a moment, he shelved the matter of the Aldebaran.
"They didn't need sending equipment, Barney," he said. "They used ours."
"What do you mean?" Keaveney challenged.
"Look what happened. Sid Harrington was poisoned in Konkrook. The news, of course, was sent out at once, as the geeks knew it would be, to every residency and trading-station on Uller, and that was the signal they'd agreed upon, probably months in advance. All they had to do was have that geek servant put poison in Harrington's whiskey, and we did the rest."