husbands upon land-cars or into freight-conveyors and so got them out to where they could rage in unbridled fury.

The emperor and his court were probably last of all to be released from the effects of the disciplinary-circuit broadcasts by mere distance. The Empire was reduced to chaos. For fifty miles about every bomb it was impossible for any man to move a muscle.

For seventy-five it was torment.

No man could go within a hundred miles of any of the small objects dropped from the Starshine and her sister-ships without experiencing active discomfort.

Obviously, the cities housed the machinery of government and the matter-transmitters by which the Empire communicated with its subject worlds and the food-synthesizers and the shelters in which men were accustomed to live and the baths and lecture-halls and amusement-centers in which they diverted themselves.

Men were barred from such places absolutely. They could not govern nor read nor have food or drink or bathe or even sleep upon comfortable soft couches. For the very means of living they were dependent upon the favor of women—because women were free to go anywhere and do anything, while men had to stay in the open fields like cattle.

The foundation of the civilization of Greater Sinab was shattered because women abruptly ceased to be merely inferior animals. The defenses of that one planet were non-existent, and even the four ships just taken off went down recklessly to the seemingly unharmed cities—to land with monstrous crashes and every man in them helpless. The ships were out of action for as long as the broadcast should continue.

But the fleet of Ades rendezvoused at Ades, and again put out into space. They divided now and attacked the subjugated planets. They had no weapons save the devices which every government in the galaxy used.

It was as if they fought a war with the night-sticks of policemen. But the disciplinary circuit which made governments absolute, by the most trivial of modifications became a device by which men were barred from cities, and therefore from government. All government ceased.

Active warfare by the Empire of Sinab became impossible. Space-yards, armories, space-ships grounded and space-ships as they landed from the void—every facility for war or rule in an empire of twenty planets became useless without the killing of a single man and without the least hope of resistance.

Only—a long while since, a 

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