Here, after hasty preparation, had the five comrades-in-adventure established residence until Gary Lane could convince the World Council, which gathered in this traditionally neutral nation, of the urgency of their demands ... and receive from this all-supreme body that terrestrial secret which was vital to the furtherment of their aims.[3] [Footnote 3: Out of the bloody conflict of the Anarchist Rebellion (2197-2208 A.D.) was born, at long last, the Terrestrial World Union. National boundaries were broken down, racial cliques and prejudices were abandoned, and Earth became one single community speaking a single language. The World Council, an electoral body seated in Geneva, Unit 44a (once the Republic of Switzerland), governed planetary trade, politics and practices.--_Ed._] Here had they cooled their heels for very nearly a fortnight while Gary wormed and forced and argued his way through hordes of underlings to finally reach the ear of those Councillors who alone could grant his request. Such an interview had finally been achieved, and today was the fateful appointment. Alone, a few short hours ago, Lane had set forth to the Council Hall, laden with Muldoon's photographs, his own and Dr. Bryant's mathematical analyses, and all other documents necessary to prove his claims. Now his companions, placidly or nervously as their individual natures determined, awaited his return. * * * * * As to what sort of exhibition she herself was making, Nora Powell could not say. If she was not so openly impatient as Flick Muldoon, neither was she complacently attentive like the two older scientists. She was, she thought with sudden whimsy, much like one of those ancient volcanic peaks so gloriously sharp-limned on the horizon before her: surfacely cool, but inwardly and secretly aflame with constrained eruptive fires which might at any moment burst their bonds. The afternoon was pleasantly cool, but standing there alone on the balcony her cheeks were suddenly warm to the touch as she caught herself wondering what would be Gary Lane's reaction were he to realize how startlingly accurate was this analogy. During these last weeks, their past differences forgotten, she and the young physicist had fallen into a pleasant and easy _camaraderie_. Formalities had been swept away in the urgency of the moment, and on everything they worked together like lifelong friends. But that, thought Nora with a thin stirring of rebelliousness, was just the trouble. That which within her had developed toward Gary Lane could not so easily be dismissed with the loose and meaningless term "friendship." It was something else, something deeper, stronger, more tremulously chaotic ... like the subdued inner strivings of those pleasantly placid mountains.