Terranova. The visitors accepted the glasses, in which ice tinkled musically.

"You seem depressed," said Kim politely, another stock phrase. It was a way of getting immediately to business.

"There's trouble," growled the Mayor of Steadheim. "Bad trouble. It couldn't be worse. It looks like Ades is going to be wiped out. For lack of space-ships and fuel. Those so-and-so's on Sinab Two!"

"Lack of space-ships and fuel?" protested Kim. "But you're making them!"

"We thought we were," growled the Mayor. "We've stopped. We're stuck. We're finished—and the ships aren't. The same with the fuel. There's not a drop for you and things look bad! But we can't make ships, and we couldn't make fuel for them if we could! That's why we've come to you. We've got to have those ships!"

He pounded with his fist for emphasis. Kim blinked at him. After twenty thousand years of civilization it was odd to hear a man say that it was impossible to make anything that happened to be wanted. Most of the peoples of the First Galaxy, to be sure, were hardly progressive.

Every habitable planet had been explored and colonized, and the human race swarmed and bred from rim to rim. But on every planet but one—Ades—men were enslaved by the Disciplinary Circuit, which, as an agent of government subjected every citizen on every planet to torture or death at the whim of his rulers.[1]

So everywhere but on Ades in the First Galaxy progress had come to an end and only those people who, for intelligence or crime or rebellion or the lack of a sheeplike spirit, had been exiled to Ades looked forward to any further triumphs for mankind.

Kim Rendell—himself a fugitive from the planet Alphin Three—had allied himself with them and the colony on Terranova was a victory of his contriving.

It was the first foothold of the human race across the monstrous void surrounding the First Galaxy.

It was the promise of all the island universes in all the cosmos, opened for the use of men. It had seemed that an unending march of triumph lay ahead. So it was incredible that the men of Ades should be unable to make space-ships or the fuel needed for ships to subjugate the new galaxy.

"But why not?" demanded Kim. "What's preventing it? You've got the record-reels from the Starshine! They tell you 

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