"Will you help us?" she said. "You have knowledge, and knowledge is power. Will you aid Lyra in its fight for freedom?"

Standish stood up slowly, face a grim line of determination. "Yes," he said. "I'll do all I can."

He began with a survey of the city of Calthedra. With Ga-Marr answering his many questions, Standish passed from street to street, building to building, no detail missing his sharp eyes. He saw the wreckage of the space warp machine, broken ray cannon, the debris-choked lower levels where once light-hearted Lyrians had their libraries and laboratories.

Then Standish spent two days devising an intelligence test as he remembered them from his Earth studies. The test, he instructed Ga-Marr, was to be given to every able-bodied man in Calthedra.

He spent a week more checking the results. But at length from the mass of papers he selected twenty-four Lyrians whose IQ rating and general scientific aptitude seemed in advance of their fellows. The Earthman then revealed his plan to Ga-Marr.

"We're going to build a space ship," he said, "a super destroyer with the most powerful atomic motors I've ever designed. We're going to take this war into our own hands—attack, rather than wait to be attacked."

A call for workmen was broadcast. The response was overwhelming. All Calthedra, all Lyra wanted to help the man from Earth in the struggle to free them from bondage.

With the twenty-four picked men as overseers, the work began. A flat space was selected beyond the outskirts of the city. Food depots were thrown up, together with temporary housing quarters. Like a colony of ants, the workmen labored in three shifts. At night, the work went on by the light of solar-condensor lamps mounted on towers at every point of vantage.

The ship began to take form. A long cigar-shaped blue-black hull was fashioned out of "feloranium", a metal peculiar to Lyra which Standish toughened by the addition of five alloys. At intermittent spaces along that hull, disappearing ray guns were swivel-mounted, operated and loaded by remote control.

The Earthman personally supervised the installation of the atomic motors. Each he had given the most strenuous block tests. Switched on, they purred like six gargantuan cats, alive with effortless strength.

Finally Ga-Marr climbed out of the huge cabin and smiled.

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