The President called for a chronometer check. The instrument in the Chamber had lost two hundredths of a second, and Hoshawk could see that Jeffrey was making a mental note of that. He was forced to admit that the young mutant was thorough. There were two minutes left. Jeffrey sat straight before the great keyboard, poised an instant, and then his incredibly facile fingers played the keys, flashing from one bank to the next, shooting the chair to right and to left, while he watched the map above him and the great bank of lights on each side. Then he leaned back, relaxed. Hoshawk was glad now they were playing it safe. Jeffrey had insisted on the Midwest Chamber in preference to the Pacific or Atlantic station. For this was modern war. There would be only one person killed. This was a war of electronics, deadly and final, but no one would be actually killed but the losing President. That was decreed by the Six-Continent Council. It was one minute before the hour. The President pressed a key. The Starter answered: "President Wadsworth, are you ready?" "Ready," said Jeffrey in a high voice. Hoshawk heard the Starter's voice: "President Forgacs, are you ready?" "Ja," came the deep voice of the Hunyas president. Jeffrey flicked the oxygen valve for a second, snapped it off, and Hoshawk saw him glance down at it. Then Jeffrey sat poised, all the alertness of his incredible mind bearing intently on the map before him. A bell sounded. The war was on! Jeffrey did not move. He waited, and watched. Ten trillion electronic tubes would flash their information on the Map. He waited--one minute, two minutes, five minutes. The Map was dark. So Forgacs wanted him to move first. Jeffrey flicked the oxygen and his chair shot to the left. His fingers blurred into movement. He shot back to the center of the keyboard and focused his entire intellect on the Map. A dozen tiny red lights rose off the coast of Newfoundland and raced eastward. Each light represented a thousand rockets loaded with thirty tons of DTN. One of those rockets would wipe Berlin from the earth--if it struck. But Hoshawk knew the President did not expect them to reach Europe. They did not. Near the coast of Holland they began to wink out. One got as far as Cologne. If the Chamber had been above ground instead of three hundred feet deep in solid rock, they would have felt the concussion, for DTN's powerful waves traveled at the speed of light. Still there was no answer. Jeffrey's fingers played for an instant on the keys. Red lights rose from Labrador, from near Boston, from Florida, and streaked east--not for Berlin this time, but for Marseilles. Jeffrey was testing Forgacs' explosive screen. It was wholly effective; one after the other, the trains of red lights winked out.