strain-pile. The negative potential would keep on increasing geometrically with time, as planned, to the final goal of joint catastrophe and stalemate.

Some sort of knowledge was drumming silently at her threshold of consciousness. Something she couldn't quite grasp. About the woman in the stereop? Possibly. It would come to her soon.

Ignoring Perat's gloating smile, she looked casually at the metron dial, and her heart leaped with elation, for the dial had ceased revolving. Electrons must be flowing from the center of the ship through the walls, outward toward the surface two thousand miles away, and the massive currents were probably jamming all the wall circuits.

Within minutes, finis.

Could she really rest, now? She was beginning to feel very tired, almost sleepy. Her duty had been done, and nothing could ever be important again.

Gorph was answering his master over the speaker: "Yes, your excellency, we got them back, that is to say, excepting that one of the five is only half-way out of its cradle."

Life was good, life was beautiful. She almost yawned. Most certainly all of the columns had been pulled out, and then four had been replaced and something had broken down with the fifth. But they had all been out, and that was the only thing that mattered.

"What happened, Gorph?" asked Perat, sipping at his terif again. His eyes were fastened on his mistress.

She knew that he had pulled the safety catch on the Faeg.

"When the crew took the rods out, the prime mover broke down on the fifth one, when it was only half-way out. They brought in another mover and got the other four rods back in, and now they're trying to repair the first mover and push the fifth rod back."

(The fifth rod had not been completely drawn. Oh Almighty Heaven!)

"Very well, Gorph. I need not repeat that none of the rods are to be moved out again, unless I appear to you personally. I'll talk to you later."

The box went dead.

Perat, now taking no notice of Evelyn, finished his terif leisurely. She sat at his side, breathing woodenly. She had done all that she could do. All five rods had not been withdrawn, and they never would be, now.

 Prev. P 26/31 next