echanical and scientific resources make
us masters of time as well as the earth. You shall see."

Naturally I was worried. I would have given much if I could have passed
this information on to our chiefs.

But two days later a mighty exultation arose within me, when from far to
the east and also to the south there came the rolling and continuous
thunder of rocket fire. I was in my own apartment at the time. The Han
captain of my guard was with me, as usual, and two guards stood just
within the door. The others were in the corridor outside. And as soon as
I heard it, I questioned my jailer with a look. He nodded assent, and I
did what probably every disengaged person in Lo-Tan did at the same
moment, tuned in on the local broadcast of the Military Headquarters
View and Control Room.

It was as though the side wall of my apartment had dissolved, and we
looked into a large room or office which had no walls or ceiling, these
being replaced by the interior surface of a hemisphere, which was in
fact a vast viewplate on which those in the room could see in every
direction. Some 200 staff officers had their desks in this room. Each
desk was equipped with a system of small viewplates of its own, and each
officer was responsible for a given directional section of the "map,"
and busied himself with teleprojectoscope examination of it, quite
independently of the general view thrown on the dome plate.

At a raised circular desk in the center, which was composed entirely of
viewplates, sat the Executive Marshal, scanning the hemisphere, calling
occasionally for telescopic views of one section or another on his desk
plates, and noting the little pale green signal lights that flashed up
as Sector Observers called for his attention.

* * * * *

Members of Strategy Board, Base Commanders of military units, and
San-Lan himself, I understood, sat at similar desks in their private
offices, on which all these views were duplicated, and in constant
verbal and visual communication with one another and with the Executive
Marshal.

The particular view which appeared on my own wall fortunately showed the
east side of the dome viewplate and in one corner of my picture appeared
the Executive Marshal himself.

Although I was getting a viewplate picture of a viewplate picture, I
could see the broad, rugged valley to the east plainly, and the
relatively low ridge beyond, which must have been some thirty miles
a