dropped into the home system. This was done by a method which could not be made completely clear by the captive green man; the basic idea of which, however, was easy to comprehend:

A patrol of no less than 20,000 saucers was brought within a mile of the world's surface. They hovered in lines, opened file, linked up until the planet was girdled by one continuous belt of ships. On a planet of the Earth's circumference, this would be about one saucer per mile. The ships were connected electronically in series, and at a button's push, a lever's throw, or a dial's setting in the control vessel, the saucers together with the captive world were shot through sub-space and into the system Lluagor, where they were fixed in an orbit around the parent star Tsloahn. The saucers then drew off, and the Graken owned another world, a new home for their waxing, fruitful hordes.

After two failures, in which planets already crawling with millions of Graken blew up while entering sub-space, the method of annexation was perfected and the remaining forty-nine planets were added to the first two, Chwosst and Csenfar, in the home system. Later acquisitions were brought to the base after any intelligent native races had been crippled or annihilated, and there, in the comfort and convenience of their own spaceways, the Graken mopped them up and settled on them, keeping alive any species that made acceptable food. The journey through sub-space and the orbit-fixing did not affect the atmosphere or inhabitants of the planets in any way.

Thus far, no humanoid (or Grakenoid) races had been found in all the explored universe. The possibility of humans as Graken-food was left undiscussed. Cannibalism, even of this off-beat kind, might be repugnant to the green folk, even though race-murder, of a second-cousin breed like Man, was not.

The patrol fleets were not in touch with their home base, as communication through sub-space was impossible. This was established by repeated questioning of the alien prisoner, whose name was an approximation of the syllable Glodd.

Only chance had brought the patrol to the Solar system. It was so far from Lluagor, even by the dimension-cutting sub-space, that it might never have been found except for an accident in their navigation.

Terra had been conquered and ravaged and would now be kidnapped because of a slip of an alien finger on an unknown instrument panel!

CHAPTER VIII

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