"Directions, pal. Cut in the glide path transmitter now and stick with it until further instructions so that nothing goes wrong."
"No time to explain now, Portiz! I've work to do!"
Ward snapped off, and immediately reached out for the televisorphone. He dialed Public Service and asked for his good friend Duka Dwane, Venusian utility magnate.
"Duka," he barked after credentialling his way past a Mr. Dwane's-in-conference operator, "this is Silvy Ward of the Authority. There's a Martian destroyer coming in with obvious intentions of bombing Pali. I want you to black out the city immediately."
"But, Silvy, think of the convention," Dwane protested. "I had to give them special fluorescent lighting; they'll be angry if I cut them off!"
"If you don't cut them off this time they'll never be cut off again. Kick that master switch over pronto. The Authority will take all responsibility!"
Ward cut off wondering if that "_sharnar_" had meant "friend" or "bigshot"; it meant one thing in Pali and another in Vanyi, the city across the "tracks".
Four minutes gone. Twenty degrees. The destroyer should be almost west-south-west now.
"Wagner," Ward barked. "How are you coming?"
"It's the relay, right enough. I should have it clicking in a few mins."
"You've about twenty, so do it right! Buzz Control and tell them that we're going to cut off the landing beams on the south of the field and for them to light up all the eastern boundary lights."
The spirit of the Leader rides with us, thought the destroyer's commander. The very force of his will has caused those fools below to leave their beam on. And they are members of the race that seeks to dictate terms to the Leader! So ignorant they are, so unenlightened. They are unfit to rule. By the great god Zabir--nay, not by that false god, but by the Leader, we are the only ones fit to rule and we shall!
"_Andrakalarn marsti virki!_" he shrilled into the intercommunication tube.
The moment of reckoning--in twelve minutes!
Meanwhile Charleston's spaceyacht was following the destroyer down the strange layer of wild winds in Venus' stratosphere. Some time before he had reached out a pudgy hand to turn on his infrared view-plates and the destroyer stood out sharply on the visual grid.