Rinso. But don't count on it. Babe, this is a spot." There were dark circles under his eyes big enough to make barrels with.
"Then how about a joy-ride?" asked the girl. She looked absentmindedly at her fingernails.
Bartok was studying her closely. "Yeah," he said. "How about it?" He dropped into a chair. "Shoot," he said. "I know that mysterious air of yours."
In cloyingly sweet tones she replied: "Barty, darling, don't be an old silly. Aintcha gonna take itsy-bittsy Babesy for a ride?"
He stiffened as if he had been shot. "Sure," he said. "Why didn't you say it that way before?" They shot up to the roof in Bartok's private elevator and got into the commander's very private plane. As they took off he growled: "All right—spill it."
"I'm sorry I had to be sickening before you got the idea through your skull that I wanted absolute and complete privacy," she said, again her own brisk self. "But I have a notion."
"She has a notion," said Bartok expectantly.
"Take it easy. Only a hunch—still —where do you suppose there's enough room for a complete invasion-culture to develop without once coming into contact with the Earth culture till now, when it's at its height?"
"Space is plenty big, Babe. There's room for a thousand colonial systems as big as ours that we'd never even know of."
"Okay. That establishes the very first postulate. Those things are real. Therefore one doesn't have to be a psychic to investigate them. I am not psychic; ergo I can and will investigate them—in person." The girl avoided Bartok's eyes, and rattled on: "May be that my logic doesn't hold water, but I think I can handle the job. You wouldn't send me out there, and I know you're on the verge of saying that you'll go yourself.
"Well, you'll do no such damned thing, because they need you here as a relay center and someone whose statements to the public have some degree of authenticity. You're the only one in the whole blasted navy that's worth a whoop in hell, and our benighted citizens know that as well as that yellow-bellied Admiral of the Fleet Fitzjames. Now that it's settled that you can't be spared we'll get around to the reasons why I, rather than any other agent from the wing, should be assigned to this job."
"We can dispense with that," said Bartok wearily. "The fact is that next to me you're the best worker we have. So go, my child, with the blessings of this old hand."
"Cut the kidding," she snapped. "I mean business. Instead of the blessing of that old hand I'd like some advice from that old head."
"You can have my biography," said Bartok. "'Twenty Years a Spy, or, The Tale of a Voyeur Who Made Good'." He took from his pocket a small package. "This," he said, "I have been carrying for the moment when you'd pop your kind proposition. It's lightly sealed. In a moment of supreme danger you are to open it and be guided accordingly."
"Thanks," she said grimly. "Whatever it is, I believe I'll need it."
Chapter II.
Bartok had never thought he could forget Babe, but that was just what he did in the next two months. It was the healthiest thing to do after she had hopped off in the big, fast one-seater that had been built especially for her jaunt. And Bartok was busy. Bartok was so busy that sometimes he thought he must be mad and living in a world of hallucinations on the reasonable grounds that nobody could be as overworked as he was and survive it.
Quietly and persistantly the invaders kept moving in, establishing bases as far as anyone could see. The personnel of the Intelligence Wing was dispersed throughout the colonial system to restore order and prevent hampering of the Fleet as it was making ready to attack.
It was, of course, somewhat problematical as to just when that attack would come. The yellow-bellied Admiral Fitzjames was cowering in his flagship behind miles of steel and chewing his nails with sheer terror. For the ships he sent out—cruiser, destroyer, patroller, interceptor or miles-long battlewagon of the line—simply didn't come back. If they got within sighting distance of the invaders they never survived to tell of it. And the ether was still jammed thick as apparently unlimited power could make it. Or was their power unlimited? Nobody knew.
It was bidding fair to be the most successful invasion of all times; just as the successful exploration is the one without adventure to mark its high points so this invasion was completely unchronicled by those invaded. They simply didn't know.
The galactic state of jitters is not easy to describe, but that's what it was. Tap a person on the shoulder and he'd turn with a shriek, fainting dead away. Suicide was on the upcurve, psychoses were increasing, messiahs popped up like mushrooms to lead the saved to glory and life everlasting. Bartok's men arrested these as fast as they could and even formed a few rival cults on the premise that a few million fanatic followers would be not at all bad things to have about, thus capitalizing on the stressful times.
Production and distribution of commodities bade fair to break, down; it was Bartok's men who saved them. Acting on an old-time tradition Intelligence men stood with drawn guns at the doors of factories, offering to blow the guts out of the man who stopped working.
The commander, on the fly between the stars of the colonial system, hadn't time to change his socks, let alone receive re-
