Dirk stared at the speaker strickenly, realizing the logic of all Slador had said, but feeling, nevertheless, sick despair that Earth's past madnesses should now so destroy the only chance of present salvation. He turned to the girl, who returned his gaze with a helpless little shrug of sympathy.
He wet his lips, said hoarsely, "But ... but if you do not help us, Earth is doomed to tyranny for countless decades to come. You cannot refuse us your aid—"
Slador said smoothly, surprisingly, "I have not said I would not aid you. I have merely forbidden your forces the soil of Nadron. But there are ... other ways of helping. Ways not under the ban of our Council's sage decision."
Hope surged in Morris like a welling tide.
"There are?" he cried. "What ways, Ptan Slador?"
"Have you forgotten," asked Slador, "the strangeness of your own existence here? Or is it that you do not yet see how this can be bent to use? Listen, my son—"
He spoke, and Dirk Morris listened with ever growing interest.
III
Corporal Ned Tandred, Precinct Collector of Taxes in the Ninth Ward, Thirty-Fourth district of Greater Globe City, did not like his job.