extends its wings, and come shrieking through the tortured air in a mad race to be the first to land upon the expectant Earth. In great flawless spirals—beautiful beyond belief—they lost altitude, leaving behind a vortex of clouds boiling furiously at their passage. Venus was in the lead. Bill Nardon recognized the powerful cruiser by its insignia of a serpent biting its tail, fashioned of Josmians—Venusian pearls. Close behind it was Europa, with the insignia of a blazing Jupiter on its side; Neptune with its emblazoned shield of a tiered city, and little Mercury with the royal emblem of incandescent Sol. And at the very end, aloof, disdainful, the truly magnificent work of science and art that was the Martian vessel, which characteristically wore no emblem at all, and seemed to be content to be the last to arrive, so long as it kept from being contaminated by close contact with the races of other worlds than Mars.

A great swirl of ceremonial music rose from the immense spaceport, the cathedral-like architectonics weaving intricate patterns upwards to the skies as if to receive in an ocean of melody the arriving delegates.

Bill Nardon sighed, his task was about to begin. With a slight movement of his right hand, he touched the controls gleaming on the desk before him, and the scene at the spaceport rushed with vertiginous speed into close focus; still he was not satisfied, but continued to manipulate the Ethero-solidograph controls until the emerging occupants of the Venusian ship grew on the screen to life-size. With infinite care he studied and analyzed their faces, their exquisite fragile bodies with the long, membranous wings; noted the almost imperceptible shadow of baffled apprehension beneath the mask of imperturbability, and found—nothing. But that was to be expected. After all, of all the planets, Venus was the least warlike, which was fortunate indeed.

The tall, rangy Europans, offspring of Terran colonists, with their strange, silver-furred Panadur co-rulers, came next. Bill lingered over the Panadur leader, so strangely human in his four feet of upright, slender body, completely furred in gleaming silver fur to the very throat-line, with the delicate triangular face dominated by immense beryl eyes. Strange creatures of a world within a world, drawing their sustenance from the eerie radio-active caverns of their great Jupiterian satellite. The Neptunians were descendants of Earthmen too, but subtly changed by the awesome environment of their gigantic world.

The Mercurians were a problem in themselves. For of all the planets, theirs was a ruthless 

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