Read The Invaders Plan for Free Online Page A

graphs would look jumpy and unconvincing. I hadn't even thought it was important to anyone.
    But Captain Roke was going on. "So the Lord of the Fleet simply came to me and we ordered a routine survey by a competent combat engineer." Ah! No wonder we had not been able to find the original! It had been ordered by the Crown and would have come straight to Palace City – and even Lombar Hisst couldn't get into that!
    The King's Own Astrographer tapped the top sheet of the report. "The survey was accordingly made. And I greatly fear our worst fears were realized." He paused for emphasis, looking gravely around the vast board. "The present inhabitants are wrecking the planet! Even if they don't blow it up first, they will have rendered it useless and uninhabitable long before the invasion called for on our Timetable!" A startled shock had gone around the whole vast table.
    Lombar Hisst was gouging Endow's back urgently, giving him his cue.
    "Captain . . . er . . . Captain," quavered Endow, trying his best to sound bold, "can we . . . ah . . . be sure that these conclusions are not that of some subordinate? Such an alarmist conclusion ..."
    "Lord Endow," said Captain Roke, "the combat engineer made no recommendations at all. He simply took measurements, samples and photographs." With a flick of his wrist, for all the world like a street magician, he snapped a chart that rolled out from the dais, across it and onto the floor, fifteen feet of tabulated observations. And then his voice bounced around the hall. "It was I who did the summary: it was I who made the conclusion! And every Fleet astrographer and geophysicist consulted concurred with it absolutely!" Endow got another jab in the back and tried again. "And . . . er . . . oof. . . Could we inquire what there is in those observations that led experts to that opinion?"
    "You may," said Captain Roke. He snapped the roll back to him like another magician's trick but there was only hard scientific certainty in his voice tones. As he looked at the top lines, he said, "Compared to the last reliable observations taken a third of a century ago, the oxygen in the oceans there has depleted 14 percent. This means a destruction of the hydrographic biosphere."
    "I beg pardon?" said some Lord at the huge table.
    Captain Roke abruptly realized he was not talking to a totally informed audience. "Hydrographic biosphere is that part of the planet's life band that lives in the oceans. Samples show pollution, possibly oil spills from these figures of increased petroleum molecules in ocean . . ."
    "Petroleum?" called someone.
    "The oil that forms when cataclysms bury living matter: under pressure, the remains become a source of carbon fuel. They pump it to the surface and burn it." Lords and aides were looking at one another in consternation. Someone called, "You mean it's a fire culture? I thought you said it was thermonuclear."
    "Please let me get on," said Captain Roke. He rattled the chart. "The industrial waste in the atmosphere measures now in excess of a trillion tons, well beyond the capacity of dead and living things now extant there to reabsorb."
    "A thermonuclear fire culture," puzzled someone at the back of the hall.
    Captain Roke plowed on. "The upper atmosphere hydrocarbon imbalance is critical and worsening. The sulfur content has grown excessive. The heat from their star is becoming progressively more trapped by the contaminated atmosphere. Their magnetic poles are wandering." He sensed his audience was impatient for him to get on with it. He laid aside the chart.
    "What it means," said Captain Roke, putting his hands on the dais table and leaning toward them, "is a double threat to that planet. One: they are burning up their atmosphere oxygen at a rate that will cease to support life long before the planned date of our Invasion Timetable. Two: the planet has glacial polar caps and the increase of surface temperature, combined with wandering polar caps, could