CHAPTER XXIV

_Attack on the Palace_ I must take you back now to the Water Festival and the events in the Great City which followed it. _Slaans_ in murderous frenzy were plunging through the throng of erstwhile revelers. Maida could not quell them. The revolt which she had started against Tarrano seemed now a self-created monster to destroy us all. But there were Earth men among us. A hundred of them, no more. They had come from Washington that same day; had landed, I learned later, secretly near the Great City, sent with our Ea…