Ignoring Perat's gloating smile, she looked casually at the metron dial, and her heart leaped with elation, for the dial had ceased revolving. Electrons must be flowing from the center of the ship through the walls, outward toward the surface two thousand miles away, and the massive currents were probably jamming all the wall circuits. Within minutes, _finis_. Could she really rest, now? She was beginning to feel very tired, almost sleepy. Her duty had been done, and nothing could ever be important again. Gorph was answering his master over the speaker: "Yes, your excellency, we got them back, that is to say, excepting that one of the five is only half-way out of its cradle." Life was good, life was beautiful. She almost yawned. Most certainly all of the columns had been pulled out, and then four had been replaced and something had broken down with the fifth. But they had all been out, and that was the only thing that mattered. "What happened, Gorph?" asked Perat, sipping at his _terif_ again. His eyes were fastened on his mistress. She knew that he had pulled the safety catch on the Faeg. "When the crew took the rods out, the prime mover broke down on the fifth one, when it was only half-way out. They brought in another mover and got the other four rods back in, and now they're trying to repair the first mover and push the fifth rod back." (The fifth rod had not been completely drawn. Oh Almighty Heaven!) "Very well, Gorph. I need not repeat that none of the rods are to be moved out again, unless I appear to you personally. I'll talk to you later." The box went dead. Perat, now taking no notice of Evelyn, finished his _terif_ leisurely. She sat at his side, breathing woodenly. She had done all that she could do. All five rods had not been withdrawn, and they never would be, now. "If all Terran women are like you," he began slowly, "I cannot understand how you Terrans lost this battle." He did not expect an answer, and did not wait for one. His hard eyes seemed softened somewhat by a curious admiration. "Only your own gods know what you have endured in your attempt to start the pile." She looked up wretchedly. He went on: "Yes, we learned in the nick of time, didn't we? Our physicists told Gorph that the great rods were the core of a pile that could have converted both ships into pure energy, with not a shred of matter left over--something that all the fission piles in the two galaxies couldn't do. It seems that the pile, if activated, would have introduced sufficient energy into the low-packing-fraction atoms, from iron on down to helium, to transform them completely from matter into radiation.