Things were going rather well, he thought. Seaton was tangled up with whoever the new enemy had turned out to be; might well be dead; at any rate, was not a factor he, DuQuesne, needed currently to take into his calculations. By the time Seaton was back in circulation DuQuesne should have his new ship and be ready to handle him. And from then on…

From then on, thought DuQuesne, it was only a short step to his rightful, inevitable destiny: His universe. No one able to contest his mastery.-So thought DuQuesne, who at that point in time knew nearly every factor that bore upon his plans, and had carefully and correctly evaluated them all. He knew about the Llurdi and the Jelmi; he knew that Seaton and the Chlorans were, from his point of view, keeping each other neutralized; he knew that the Norlaminians, even, were unlikely to cause him any trouble.

DuQuesne really knew all the relevant facts but one — or, you might say, two. These two facts were a very long distance away. One was a young girl. The other was her mother.

Two individuals out of a universe! Why, even if DuQuesne had known of their existence, he might have discounted their importance completely. In which he would have been — completely — wrong.

SINCE Seaton as Ky-El Mokak was not the least bit fussy, he accepted the first house that Prenk showed him. His honor offered also — with a more than somewhat suggestive expression — to send him a housekeeper, but Seaton declined the offer with thanks; explaining that that could wait until he got himself organized and could do a little looking around for himself.

Prenk gave Seaton a handful of currency and a ground car — one of Prenk’s own, this; a beautifully streamlined, beautifully kept little three-wheeled jewel of a ground-car — told him where the shopping-centers were, and went back to City Hall.

Seaton bought a haircut and a shave, a couple of outfits of clothing, and some household supplies, which he took out to his new home and stowed away.

By that time it was the local equivalent of half-past three, and the shifts changed at four o’clock; wherefore he drove his spectacular little speedster six miles up-canyon to the uraninite mine that was the sole reason for the town’s existence. Since he did not want to be shot out of hand, he did not dare to be late or to do anything unusual, either during the five-mile train-ride along the main tunnel or during the skip-ride down to the eighty-four-hundred-foot level where he was to work.

Once in the stope itself, however, he stopped — exactly thirteen feet short of the stiffly erect young overseer — and stood still while his shift mates picked up their tools and started for the banging wall — the something-more-than-vertical face of the cavernous stope — to begin their day’s work.

The overseer-was a well-fed young man, and the second native Seaton had seen who looked more than half alive. His jacket, breeches and boots were as glossily black as his crash-helmet was glossily white. He was a very proud young man, and arrogant. His side-arm hung proudly at his hip. His bull-whip coiled arrogantly ready for instant use.

This wight stared haughtily at Seaton for a moment, and began to swell up like a pouter pigeon. Then, as Seaton made an unmistakable gesture at him, he went into smoothly violent action.

“Oh, you’re the wilder!” he snarled, and swung the heavy blacksnake with practiced ease.

But Seaton had known exactly what to expect and he was ready for it. He ducked and sidestepped with the speed and control of the trained gymnast that he was; he handled the short, thick club that had been in his sleeve as though it were the wand of the highly skilled prestidigitator that he was. Thus, in the instant that the end of the lash curled savagely around the hickory he swung it like a home-run hitter swings a bat — and caught the blacksnake’s heavy, shot-loaded butt on the fly in his right hand.

The minion went for his gun, of course, but Seaton’s right arm was already swinging around and back, and as gun cleared holster the bull-whip’s vicious tip snapped around both gun and hand with a pistol-sharp report. The trooper stared, for an instant stunned, at the blood spurting from his paralyzed right hand; and that instant was enough.

Seaton stepped up to him and put his left fist deep into his midsection. Then, as the half-conscious man began to double over, he sent his right fist against its preselected target. Not the jaw, he didn’t want to break his hand or the throat. Nor did he hit him hard; he didn’t want to kill the guy, or even damage him permanently.

As the man fell to the hard-rock floor — writhing in agony, groaning, strangling and gasping horribly for breath — the men and women and teen-agers looking on burst as one into clamor. “Stomp ’im!” they shrieked and yelled. “Give ’im the boots! Stomp ’im! Kill ’im! Stomp ’is head clean off! Stomp ’im right down into the rock!”

“Hold it!” Seaton rasped, and the miners fell silent; but they did not relapse into their former apathy.

Seaton stood by, waiting coldly for his victim to be able to draw a breath. He picked the overseer’s pistol-like weapon up and looked it over. He had never seen anything like it before, and casual inspection didn’t tell him much about how it worked, but that could wait. He didn’t intend to use it. In fact, he wasn’t really interested in it at all.

When the overseer had partially recovered his senses, Seaton jammed a headset onto his head and thought viciously at him; as much to give him a taste of real punishment as to find out what he knew and to impress upon his mind exactly what he had to do if he hoped to keep on living. Then Seaton made what was for him a speech. First, to the now completely deflated officer:

“You — you slimy traitor, you quisling! Know now that a new regime has taken over. Maybe I’ll let you live and maybe I’ll turn you over to these boys and girls here — you know what they’d do to you. That depends on how exactly you stick to what I just told you.

One thought of a squeal — if you ever get one mili-meter out of line, and you’ll be under surveillance every second of every day — you’ll die a long, slow, tough death. And I mean tough!”

He turned to the miners; studied them narrowly. His “shot in the arm” had done them a lot of good. Excitement was still high; none of them had relapsed into the apathy that had affected them all such a short time before. In fact, one close-clustered group of men was eyeing Seaton and the overseer in a fashion that made it perfectly clear that, had it not been for Seaton’s mien and the gun and the whip, there would have been a lynching then and there.

“Take it easy, people,” Seaton told them. “I know you all want to tear this ape apart, but what good would it do? None. Not a bit. So I won’t let you do it, if I have to use the whip and even the gun to keep you from it. But I don’t intend to use either whip or gun and I don’t think I’ll have to, because this is the first bite of a fresh kettle of fish for every civilized human being of this world. I won’t go into much detail, but I represent a group of human beings, as human as yourselves, called HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT. I’m a fore-runner. I’m here to bring you a message; to tell you that humanity has never been conquered permanently and never will be so conquered. Humanity has triumphed and will continue to triumph over all the vermin infesting all the planets of all the solar systems of all the galaxies of all surveyed space.

“HUMANITY TRIUMPHANT’s plans have been made in full and are being put out into effect. Humanity will win here, and in not too long a time. Every Chloran in every solar system in this region of space will die. That’s a promise.

“Nor do we need your help. All we ask you is that you produce the full quota of ore every week, so that no Chloran warship will come here too soon. And that production will be no problem very shortly, since I can repair your machinery and will have it all back in working order by one week from today. So in a very few weeks you women can go back to keeping house for your families; you youngsters can go back to school; and half of you men will be able to make quota in half a shift and spend the other half of it playing penny-ante. And you, Brother Rat—” he turned back to the deposed overseer—