Captain Bolz smiled and scratched his hairy chest. The hangar and base, empty now of everything except the Blixo, had ceased to exist as an extension of Apparatus authority. He had his own plans.

In his cabin he got dressed in Western clothes. He put a wad of Turkish lira in his wallet. A frightened Oh Dear stared at him.

"We're supposed to wait for our cargo and go," said Oh Dear. "I'm certain Officer Heller is right. If I don't deliver this and Hisst finds I have not, I'll be dead."

"To Hells with Officer Heller," said Bolz. "They left that Daimler-Benz in the yard of the villa. Even that old driver with the funny laugh is still hanging around. I'm going out there, stop him from stealing the car and go on up to Istanbul and see my friend the widow."

Bolz stopped to give his mate orders to pick up the cargo when it arrived by air and load it and then, with a jaunty air despite his bulk, went out and found Ters who, for a consideration, was shortly rolling him in luxury through the night to Istanbul.

Throughout the entirety of the next day, a frightened Oh Dear waited. He hardly concerned himself with the arrival of the cargo when it was brought in by the mate and crew from the airport in the afternoon. Oh Dear conceived that Bolz might be deserting and this would leave him captainless and unable to get back to Voltar. He didn't speak a single Earth language: he saw himself stranded.

Dusk came, the light vanishing above the electronic illusion. No Bolz. If he had been there, they could leave in an hour.

The upper hole in the mountain went black. The hours dragged. Oh Dear began to be afraid of the hangar. It was so empty that his footfalls as he paced scared him with their echoes. He began to get the idea that the place was peopled now with ghosts.

Midnight came and went. One o'clock took forever to arrive. The digitals of his watch seemed to be motionless and refusing to move onward toward two. Then it became two and then two-thirty.

A loud sound somewhere made Oh Dear scream.

It was Bolz.

He had brought a truckload of counterfeit Scotch. He got his crew out and they got it aboard.

Bolz was himself pretty drunk and considerably smeared with lipstick.

It was three o'clock in the morning when the captain finally began to mount the ladder to the airlock as the last one aboard.

There was an abrupt roar overhead.

Wonderingly, thinking a freighter might have come back, Bolz got down off the ladder and stared up at the hole through the mountaintop.

He froze.

The black tail of a warship was sliding in!

Plain upon it was the symbol that looked like a fanged snake. And some letters!

THE 243RD DEATH BATTALION!

The hulk, too big for this hangar, came down with bristling guns. It hit the floor with a thud.

A hundred black-uniformed men poured out of the six locks, blastrifles ready!

Bolz, too shocked to move, was instantly seized.

A squad raced into the Blixo.

Shortly the whole crew of the freighter and Oh Dear were being prodded down the ladder to the hangar floor.

Bolz couldn't register what was happening. He had no way of knowing this was the battalion that had been sent by Lombar to "search out any traitors that were confederates of Heller's or took his orders and exterminate them." For the Blixo had left a couple days before the order had been issued by the crashed Lombar Hisst.

A man in a black uniform with scarlet gloves, taller than Bolz, loomed over him. "I am Colonel Flay of the 243rd Death Battalion. Who are you and where is everyone here?"

"I am... I am... Captain Bolz of the Blixo, this ship. I have an urgent cargo of drugs for Voltar."

An officer yelled from the Blixo's airlock, "Colonel, this ship is carrying contraband drink!"

The colonel glared at Bolz. "A smuggler!"

"I'm captain of an Apparatus freighter!"

"In those clothes? Answer me. Why weren't we challenged? Where is the personnel of this base?"

"They've gone!" quavered Bolz.

"Gone where?"

"We don't know!" screamed Oh Dear, who was being held by a Death Battalion soldier. "I am a courier to Lord Endow!"

"Ha!" said Colonel Flay. "Travelling with a smuggler? Bend that pretty fellow over a rifle and make him talk."

"No! Look at my identoplate – "

Two soldiers grabbed either end of a rifle. Another grabbed Oh Dear's head, a fourth grabbed his feet. The first two held the rifle horizontally in the middle of his back. The second two pulled. Oh Dear's spine began to crack. He screamed.

"Tell me where the others have gone!" roared Flay.

"We don't know!" shrieked Oh Dear. "Look at my I.D.!"

An officer fished in Oh Dear's pockets. He looked at the identoplate he found. "This just says he's a clerk in Section 451. That's this planet. He's no courier."

"Make him talk!" said Flay.

They pulled on Oh Dear harder.

"You better talk! You know where they have gone well enough. Don't lie again. TALK!"

Oh Dear went into a high-pitched keening as his spine stretched and cracked. He was able to get out, "I have a despatch. I have a despatch. I have a despatch! I must get it through!"

"To Hells with your despatches," said Flay.

Oh Dear had fainted.

Flay gave a signal and soldiers grabbed Bolz. One of them pulled his head back with a handful of hair and another hit him in the body with a fist. Bolz grunted with the force of it.

"Where have they gone?" demanded Flay.

"They did not tell us!" cried Bolz.

The colonel snapped his fingers and an officer put a light in his hand. Flay walked up to Bolz and shined the light in his eye. "Are you lying to us?"

Bolz writhed, trying to get away from the light. The only thing which was registering with him was that this colonel might discover that he intended to keep this base for his own use.

"His pupillary reaction," said Flay, "shows that he is lying! Hit him!"

The blow echoed through the hangar.

"Once more," said Flay, "I am going to ask you politely and then we will really get to work on you. Where has this base crew gone?"

"I DON'T KNOW!" screamed Bolz.

"Hit him!" said the colonel.

It was the last order he ever issued in this life.

The blow hit the button remote in Bolz's pocket.

There was a searing flash throughout the hangar!

The Death Battalion, the warship, the Blixo, the crew, Captain Bolz and Oh Dear glowed, suddenly outlined in incandescence. They shifted color upward from red to yellow to violet. They went black. They turned to silica, momentarily holding shape, then they became molten glass.

No one in the base was left alive.

The wall boxes that held the beams in place turned into sand which, under the ferocity of heat, turned to liquid dribble.

And then with a shuddering roar, the walls of the hangar twisted and began to cave in.

The slide of rock went on for quite a while.

Fantastic heat fused the inside of the mountain.

Then there was nothing left of the Earth base.

And buried there, because of the delay and self-interest of Bolz, lying under the pile of shuddering glass which had been Oh Dear and under the countless tons of boiling silica above it, was the ash of the despatch which had been designed to stave off an invasion of Earth.

It would never be delivered.

Oh, Madison had little doubt now that he would be able to finish his job with Heller. In the foreseeable future he would have not just the Apparatus but the entire Army and Fleet on Heller's trail.

Oh, what headlines that would make!

He was standing at an upper-story window of the Royal mansion on Relax Island, waiting for Teenie, who was unaccountably delayed. He had landed in the rear of the palace so as to stay out of sight. He was down here to tell Teenie some good news and give her some evidence.