"Again I tell you that I do not know. You have powers--individually, collectively, and as the Unit--about which I know little or nothing. _Use them!_" XXV. The "Big Brass"--socially the _Directrix_, technically the _Z9M9Z_--floated through space at the center of a hollow sphere of maulers packed almost screen to screen. She carried the Brains. She had been built around the seventeen million cubic feet of unobstructed space which comprised her "tank"--the three-dimensional chart in which vari-colored lights, stationary and moving, represented the positions and motions of solar systems, ships, loose planets, negaspheres, and all other objects and items in which Grand Fleet Operations was, or might become, interested. Completely encircling the tank's more than two thousand feet of circumference was the Rigellian-manned, multimillion-plug board; a crew and a board capable of handling efficiently more than a million combat units. In the "reducer," the comparatively tiny ten-foot tank set into an alcove, there were condensed the continuously-changing major features of the main chart, so that one man could comprehend and direct the broad strategy of the engagement. Instead of Port Admiral Haynes, who had conned that reducer and issued general orders during the only previous experience of the _Z9M9Z_ in serious warfare, Kimball Kinnison was now in supreme command. Instead of Kinnison and Worsel, who had formerly handled the big tank and the board, there were Clarrissa, Worsel, Tregonsee, and the Children of the Lens. There also, in a built-in, thoroughly competent refrigerator, was Nadreck. Port Admiral Raoul LaForge and Vice Co-ordinator Clifford Maitland were just coming aboard. Might he need anybody else, Kinnison wondered. Couldn't think of anybody--he had just about the whole top echelon of Civilization. Cliff and Laf weren't L2's, of course, but they were mighty good men--besides, he _liked_ them! Too bad that the fourth officer of their class couldn't be there, too--gallant Wiedel Holmberg, killed in action. At that, three out of four was a high average--mighty high. "Hi, Cliff--Hi, Laf!" "Hi, Kim!" The three old friends shook hands cordially, then the two newcomers stared for minutes into the maze of lights flashing and winking in the tremendous space chart. "Glad I don't have to try to make sense out of that," LaForge commented, finally. "Looks a lot different in battle harness than on practice cruises. You want me on that forward wall there, you said?"