"Space Vikings calling Eglonsby; this is your last warning. Communicate at once."
Less than a minute later, a voice came out of one of the speakers:
"Eglonsby calling Space Vikings. Your bomb has done great damage. Will you hold your fire until somebody in authority can communicate with you? This is the chief operator at the central State telecast station; I have no authority to say anything to you, or discuss anything."
"Oh, good, that sounds like a dictatorship," Harkaman was saying. "Grab the dictator and shove a pistol in his face and you have everything."
"There is nothing to discuss. Get somebody who has authority to surrender the city to us. If this is not done within the hour, the city and everybody in it will be obliterated."
"This is Gunsalis Jan, secretary to Pedrosan Pedro, President of the Council of Syndics. We will switch President Pedrosan over as soon as he can speak directly to the personage in supreme command of your ships."
"That is myself; switch him to me at once."
After a delay of less than fifteen seconds they had President Pedrosan Pedro.
"We are prepared to resist, but we realize what this would cost in lives and destruction of property," he began.
"You don't begin to. Do you know anything about nuclear weapons?"
"From history; we have no nuclear power of any sort. We can find no fissionables on this planet."
"The cost, as you put it, would be everything and everybody in Eglonsby and for a radius of almost a hundred miles. Are you still prepared to resist?"
The President of the Council of Syndics wasn't and said so. Trask asked him how much authority his position gave him.
"I have all powers in any emergency. I think," the voice added tonelessly, "that this is an emergency. The council will automatically ratify any decision I make."
Harkaman depressed a button in front of him. "What I said; dictatorship, with parliamentary false front."
"If he isn't a false-front dictator for some oligarchy." He motioned to Harkaman to take his thumb off the button. "How large is this Council?"
"Sixteen, elected by the Syndicates they represent. There is the Syndicate of Labor, the Syndicate of Manufacturers, the Syndicate of Small Businesses, the...."
"Corporate State, First Century Pre-Atomic on Terra. Benny the Moose," Harkaman said. "Let's all go down and talk to them."