Grantline produced little cigarette cylinders. "Steady your nerves,
lads; you'll need it."
He grinned at us. The hand with which he lighted my cylinder was
steady as a tower-base, but he was excited. I could see it by the
glint in his eyes, and hear it in his voice.
"What's going on?" Snap demanded.
"It's about this invading planet. By the gods, when you hear what's
really been learned about it!"
"Well, what?" I asked.
He sketched what he had heard this night at the conclave. The
mysterious invader was inhabited.
"How do they know that?" Snap put in.
"Wait. I'll tell you the rest of it. The accursed thing changes its
orbit. It banks and turns like a spaceship! It stopped out in space;
it's poised out there now between Mars and Jupiter. A world about a
fifth the size of the Moon, and the beings on it can control its
movements. They've brought it in from interstellar space, into our
solar system. Evidently the point they've reached now is far as they
want to come. They've poised out there, getting ready to attack, not
only us, but Mars and Venus simultaneously."
Grantline gazed at us through the smoke of his cigarette. He was much
like Snap, small, wiry, brisk of movement and manner, but older. His
hair was graying at the temples; his voice carried the authority of
one accustomed to commanding men.
"Don't ask me for the technicalities of how they reached these
conclusions. I'm no astronomer. I'm only telling you their conclusions
and what their discussions have been here for the past hour."
Heaven knows, we had no inclination to dispute him. What we had seen
and heard at the Red Spark tallied with his words.
He went on swiftly, "The attack, of whatever nature it may be, is
impending at once. Not next month, or next week, but now. Lord, Gregg,
I don't blame you for staring like that. You don't know what's been
going on for the past two days on Earth, and Venus and Mars. It's all
been suppressed. Neither did I, until I heard it here tonight. The
U.S.W., the Martian Union, the Venus Free State, are all preparing for
war. Every government spaceship on Earth is being commissioned. We're
not going to sit around and wait for invaders to land; the war won't
be fought on Earth if we can help it."