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There was still the threat from Keegark, but it was looking less ominous now than it had the evening before. Von Schlichten and Paula were having dinner in the Broadway Room, confident that there was nothing left to do that they could do anything about, when the extension phone that had been plugged in at their table rang.
They reported the Keegark Residency in ruins, its central buildings vanished in a huge crater; the Jan Smuts and the Christiaan De Wett were still in the Company docks, both apparently damaged by the blast which had destroyed the Residency.
The entire garrison of the small Residency at Kwurk, the most northern of the eastern shore Free Cities, had arrived at Kankad's Town in two hundred-foot contragravity scows and five aircars. Two of the aircars arrived half an hour behind the rest of the refugee flotilla, having turned off at Keegark to pay their respects to King Orgzild.
He had the Aldebaran sent north along the crest of the mountain-range between the Hoork and Konk river-valleys, where she could cover both with her own radar and other detection-devices and exchange information with the Sky-Spy, and the Gaucho sent in what looked like the right course to intercept the Boer-class freighter from Keegark.
The Keegarkan Ambassador spoke his piece, expressing on behalf of King Orgzild the deepest regret that the people of the Company should be so molested, and managing to hint that things like that simply didn't happen at Keegark. The Prince Gorkrink then spoke briefly, in sympathy.
There was a blast of almost palpable sound, and a sensation of heat that penetrated even the airtight superstructure of the Elmoran. An instant later, there was another, and another, similar shock. Two more bombs had gone off behind them, in Keegark; that meant that they had found King Orgzild's remaining nuclear armament.
"Keegark, Konkrook, and the Free Cities, of course, will be relatively easy. They're in arms against us now, and we can take them over by force. We had to make that deal with Jonkvank, or, rather, I did, so that will be a slower process, but we'll get it done in time.
He kept on lecturing her about gamma-rays and ultraviolet rays and X-rays and cosmic rays, trying to keep making some sort of intelligent sounds while they clung together and waited, and, with the other half of his mind, trying not to think of everything that could go wrong with that jerry-built improvisation they had just dumped onto Keegark.
Keegark was finished; the Residency stood in the middle of the city, surrounded by two hundred thousand of King Orgzild's troops and subjects. Sending Kankad's five hundred warriors and his meager contragravity there would be the same as shovelling them into a furnace. The people at Keegark would have to be written off, like the twenty Kragans at Jaikark's palace.
"Finish your dinner, and have the rest of mine sent up," he told Paula. Leaving the elevator, he rushed into the big headquarters room just as contact was established with the Procyon, on station over the north-western corner of Takkad Sea, between Kankad's Town and Keegark.
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