In the master room, there was a huge globe, wired with multicolored lights. And as the battle swept back and forth over the face of Terra, the lights changed from dark red to violet, depending upon the power drain of that district. Master technicians, making lightning calculations in a mathematical medium adapted for power work, viewed the globe and pressed buttons that hurled relay-impulses across Terra to switch and divert power for the needy locations. Their hope was to maintain a medium red all over instead of bright violet here and almost-black red there. The Mongolian sector flamed violet after the Siberian attempt was made. Power was switched from Africa, raising the dark continent higher into the red and lowering the dangerous violet of the Mongolian sector. A sortie hit Africa, and the area pulsed briefly into the yellow and died before the technician could hit his button. North America caught it next, and power came from Antarctica to drive the invaders away. The Mongolian effort stopped and the map died into black. The extra power went into North America and it became a less dangerous color. And then the Panamanian district flared up. Into the violet it went, and the switches flew to drive power into the isthmus. Spreckled all over the globe were minor flarings, and they all increased as the Panama Zone took more and more power and still crept upward and upward. It was all very much like a game of chess here in Terra's Master Power Distribution Center. But on Panama, another scene was taking place. Four thousand of the Loard-vogh dropped to ground, driven by sheer power and as they landed, they anchored themselves to the crust of Terra. A super-atomic reached over and its sphere of energy clutched--another atomic sphere. Their inflexible beams strained against one another. Wrestling in subelectronic space, pulling and straining against one another. The crust of Terra groaned and the fault-lines rubbed and heaved. The inflexible beams pulled, trying to up-root the other--and both were anchored to the crust of the planet. Luckily, the beams broke before the very surface of Terra gave. The backlash shook Terra to the core and the tidal waves lashed out against the shorelines. The ground shook, and the resulting quakes did what the Loard-vogh had not been able to do. The quakes shook earthly damage into the cities of Terra. The energy continued to pour into the Loard-vogh planethead. The air shimmered and burst away from the hemisphere of terror, and the resulting convections drew fresh air in to be heated to almost-incandescence and driven upward. * * * * * Hotang Lu faced Billy Thompson bitterly. "This secret weapon of yours," he demanded, "it was to win for us?" "It is," said Billy. "IS? Is it not time that it be used? The Loard-vogh are upon the planet itself. Death looks us in the face." "It is not yet time."