United States or Costa Rica ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
All Nansalians who went to Sator died of a mysterious disease. A method was found whereby a man's body could be sterilized, bacteriologically speaking, so he could not spread the disease, and this was used on all Satorians entering Nansal. But you can't sterilize a whole planet. Nansalians could not go to Sator. But these three men had a different idea.
Very shortly, the Satorians were again at the mercy of Nansal. They could not fight the faster, more powerful ships of the Nansalians, and again they went down in defeat. And again they sued for peace. This time, Nansal knew better; they went right on developing their fleet while the diplomats of Sator argued.
Here they had built laboratories, factories, and dwelling places far underground, where the Satorians could never find them. Enough men reached the caverns before the disaster struck to carry on. They had been chosen from the strongest, healthiest, and most intelligent that Nansal had.
On three trips, one of the men that went back as navigator was a Nansalian. It was six years before they returned to Nansal, but when they finally did, they had learned two things. In the first place, the 'disease' which had killed Nansalians who had come in contact with Satorians on Nansal was nothing but a poison which acted on contact with the skin.
The three Satorians were exceptionally large men, almost perfect doubles of the three Nansalians and, one by one, the Nansalians replaced them. They had bleached their faces, and surgeons, working from photographs, changed their features so that the three Nansalians were exact doubles of the three astrogators. Then they acted.
For years, the Satorians traded peacefully. In the meantime, Satorian spies were working to find the strengths and weaknesses of Nansal, searching to discover their secret weapons and processes, if any. And they rigorously guarded their own secrets. They refused to disclose the secrets of the magnetic beam and the magnetic space drive.
On the other hand, the Satorians were not entirely in the dark as to the progress of Nansal, as Arcot and Morey discovered one day.
As the ships grew rapidly in the plate, Arcot gave the order to fire! The molecular rays slashed out toward the onrushing ships, picking them off as fast as the beams could be directed. The rays were invisible in space, so they managed to get several before the Satorians realized what was happening.
The man who could plot most cunningly, gain his ends by deceiving his friends best, was the man who most deserved to live. There were a few restrictions; they had loyalty, for one thing loyalty to their country and their world. In time, the Satorians rediscovered the space drive, but by this time, living on the new planet had changed them physically.
They were somewhat smaller than the Nansalians, and lighter in color, for their world was always sunless. The warm rays of the sun had tanned the skins of the Nansalians to a darker color. When the Satorians first came to Nansal, it was presumably in peace. After so many hundreds of years without war, the Nansalians accepted them, and trade treaties were signed.
Word Of The Day