from the ken of men. To me he said: "I fear a new weapon." But to the rest, he kept his peace and let the work of the Compact continue. There was nothing else to be done. Our Wall Decade was waning, and when a man or a Compact outlives the age that gave him or it birth, there is nothing to do but go forward and meet the new day dawning.

So it was with the Compact. We lived on as we had lived before: looting and killing and draining the wealth of space into our coffers. But in the back of our minds a shadow was lurking.

On the next raid, the Lady was lost. I saw it happen, as did Merril. There was nothing we could do to help her, and she died, spilling men into the void as she ruptured in her last agony.

It was off Hyperion, whence we had come to loot the trove built there by the prospectors of the Saturnian Moons. And it was a trap.

The Arrow, the Hound and the Lady circled the moonlet, swinging inward to the attack. It was the Lady who was to put aground the raiding party, and her valves hung open while men readied the assault-boats. Our radar screens showed nothing of danger. There was only the bloated giant in the sky, a ringed monster of yellow gold against the starry velvet of space.

The Lady dropped her boats, the Hound and the Arrow hovering by to watch over their sister. And suddenly, the jagged moonscape below erupted—belching streaks of fire that sought us like probing fingers. I knew in one single instant of terror that this was the new weapon that had killed the Argonaut, for it sliced into the Lady's flanks as though the steelite hull were cheese.

She bulged, glowing like an ember. There was a sudden nimbus of snow about her as her air escaped and froze, and then she rolled into her death-dance, open from bow to stern, spilling scorched corpses into the void.

The Arrow and the Hound drove off into space like furies leaving the spinning body of their sister ship behind, not waiting to watch her crash down onto the rocky face of Hyperion. And now the five of the Compact were only three, and again there was the sound of weeping among our women.

Two months after that engagement, a single assault-boat returned to Base. It was the lone survivor of the Lady's landing party. By some miracle, the three men aboard had escaped the holocaust. They had landed and been captured and then they had fought their way free and into the void once more. They were half-dead from starvation and exposure, but they had brought word to Merril that the wall that had so long protected us was crumbling.

Merril sought me out, his lean hard face grim and set.

"There was a Russian among the Americans on Hyperion," he said.

"A prisoner?" It was my hope that spoke so, not my sure knowledge of what was to come.

Merril shook his head slowly. "A technician. They developed the beam that killed the Argonaut and the Lady—together." His voice was harsh and bleak. Then suddenly he laughed. "We've touched them," he said, "Touched them on their tender spot—their purses." He bowed low, filled with bitter mockery. "Behold the diplomats, the men who are accomplishing the impossible!"

And I knew that his words spelt doom. Doom for the Compact and for the Wall Decade that was our life.

Yet we did not stint. In that year we raided Dione, Io, Ganymede, and even the American naval Base on Callisto. We gutted six Russian and four American rockets filled with treasure. And we ventured sunward as far as the moons of Mars.

We dared battles with patrol ships and won. We killed the destroyer Alexei Tolstoi off Europa and we shattered an American monitor over Syrtis itself, and watched the wreckage rain down on Yakki, the place where the Compact was born.

And we lost the Moonmaid.

The radio told us the story. Other new weapons were being developed against us, and here and there