He watched, only subconsciously aware of the intermittent voice describing, evaluating, analyzing. He sat and watched as though there were not a mobile muscle in his sweating body. _Ten-year-old children, somewhere beneath a fantastic milk-white sky, painting an impossible blue plain with the red of their own blood...._ The broadswords rose and fell with a savagery unknown to any but the ancient Turk, Mongol, Spartan. They glinted strangely in a daylight where there was no sun, and the piked maces swung in circles of red horror as they tore, smashed, at young, half-naked bodies.... They swarmed across the wide, flat expanses of bush, blue grass, and the cries that issued from their throats as they charged like hunger-crazed beasts into the sword-points of their opponents were mercifully deleted; the maddened distortion of the features on their white, young faces was enough. The voice explained, pointed out, reconciled pre-calculated plans with facts as they transpired. The masses of mangled young flesh surged now forward now back, to either side; swelled, bunched, drove, fell writhing.... He saw a head fall, a running body split in two down the back. "That's all, that's _all_!" There was bitter stuff in his throat and he fought to keep the violent sickness bottled inside him. "Yes, yes sir." _No no no no no!_ * * * * * The illumination had returned fully when Tayne walked in, saluted loosely. He carried something in his right hand. "Yes?" "There's been an alteration in our rosters--Old Man himself, I had nothing to do with it. Here." Senses still numbed, he took the thin plastisheets. He tried to get the words to make sense. Subject, transfer, quadrant 3 to quadrant 1, attention, Quadrates concerned. "Apparently the Director thought it would be better this way. For myself, I don't see that it could make any actual difference." What was the man saying? What did--there it was. Ronal Blair, Kurt Blair: quadrant 3, Blair, to quadrant 1, Tayne. By Command: Gundar Tayne, Director.... His thoughts spun dizzily. _Mike, Terry--no, those were not the names. The other Blair's sons...._ _This time, thank God, the other Blair's sons...._ CHAPTER VII "I am apparently a relatively high official in the government. It is called a Congressman. Although there are many others of equal and superior rank, I am well liked. I have a strong political following." "Was there any suspicion?" "None at all. I had the good fortune, almost immediately upon discovering my role in this civilization, to gain access to a number of speech recordings our host had made. His voice is very little different than mine, and of course within about thirty minutes I had mastered his tone, his inflection, and his manner of speech. We shall have little or no difficulty."