I saw at once that I must be near the top of the great cone-shaped building we had been making for when we crashed. Below, and all around, the white buildings extended to the horizons, looking like thousands of huge geometry-models cast down indiscriminately, cones and spheres and cubes. High above them as I was, yet I could discern swift movement in the streets, crowds of pedestrians surging to and fro, flashing vehicles of strange design, that followed the broad thoroughfares, rising in the air here and there to pass over each other. Glancing away down the long, slanting side of the cone near whose summit I stood, I saw at its base other great crowds, who massed and swirled aimlessly around the building. I turned to Kethra. "And this is Kom?" I said. He nodded. "It is Kom." I pointed toward the teeming crowds that eddied around the building's base. "You must count your people here by the millions?" I queried. His face grew somber as he too looked down at the masses of humanity below. "It is seldom there are crowds like that," he said. "But this is a time of great events, and our people gather around this building, which is the seat of the Council of Kom, that they may learn what decisions have been made." He turned from the window, face solemn and unsmiling now, and with a slight push sent my platform drifting toward and through the door. Conducting me down a long corridor, he turned in at another room, similar in every detail to the one I had just left. And there, standing up and gazing down through an open window as I had just done, was Lantin. He turned and saw me, came toward me anxiously. At a touch from Kethra, my platform sank down to the floor, and assisted by my friend, I rose weakly to my feet. "You're all right, Wheeler?" he asked quickly. I assured him that I was, for the weakness and dizziness I had felt were rapidly leaving me. Lantin laughed ruefully. "What a fool's trick of mine, to smash straight down into that roof!" He pointed upward, toward the blue sky, and walking over to the window beside him, I looked up curiously. There was the same flicker in the sky that I had noticed from above, an elusive, wavering flash of light that I knew now was caused by the sunlight glinting off the flat, transparent roof. "The roof," I said to Kethra, "does it cover all the city?" "All of Kom lies beneath it," he said. "Without it, could we live like this?" He swept an arm around in a wide gesture that included the soft, warm air, the open windows, and the white city below, laced with the greenery of gardens. "But how is it built?" I asked. "How supported? Is it glass, or what material?" "It's no material at all," he replied, astoundingly. "It's force." I looked at him, a little incredulously. "Force? It was solid enough when we crashed into it."