."

The shoonoon were getting aboard, now, shepherded by the K.N.I. officer
and a couple of his men and some of the ship's crew. A couple of sepoys
were lugging the big globe that had been brought up from below after
them. Everybody assembled on the forward top observation deck, and Miles
called for attention and, finally, got it. He pointed out the three
viewscreens mounted below the bridge, amidships. One on the left, was
tuned to a pickup on the top of the Air Terminal tower, where the Terran
city, the military reservation and the spaceport met. It showed the view
to the west, with Alpha on the horizon. The one on the right, from the
same point, gave a view in the opposite direction, to the east. The
middle screen presented a magnified view of the navigational globe on
the bridge.

Viewscreens were no novelty to the shoonoon. They were a very familiar
type of oomphel. He didn't even need to do more than tell them that the
little spot of light on the globe would show the position of the ship.
When he was sure that they understood that they could see what was
happening in Bluelake while they were away, he called the bridge and
ordered Up Ship, telling the officer on duty to hold her at five
thousand feet.

The ship rose slowly, turning toward the setting M-giant. Somebody
called attention that the views in the screens weren't changing.
Somebody else said:

"Of course not. What we see for real changes because the ship is moving.
What we see in the screens is what the oomphel on the big building sees,
and it does not move. That is for real as the oomphel sees it."

"Nice going," Edith said. "Your class has just discovered relativity."
Travis was looking at the eastward viewscreen. He stepped over beside
Miles and lowered his voice.

"Trouble over there to the east of town. Big swarm of combat
contragravity working on something on the ground. And something's on
fire, too."

"I see it."

"That's where those evacuees are camped. Why in blazes they had to bring
them here to Bluelake--"

That had been EETA, too. When the solar tides had gotten high enough to
flood the coastal area, the natives who had been evacuated from the
district had been brought here because the Native Education people
wanted them exposed to urban influences. About half of the shoonoon who
had been rounded up locally had come in from the tide-inundated area.

"Parked right in the middle of the Terran-type food production area,"
Travis was c