He found himself now in a control room. Panels thick with dust lined three of its walls. The fourth was a single massive, transparent, plastic plate through which occupants could look out across the great hold where the robots were massed ... where brief moments before Jarl Corvett had stood face to face with hideous death. Stumbling to it, Jarl stared down upon the smoke-smirched scene below. Flames still were leaping about the platform. Here and there, he could catch dim glimpses of primitives' hurrying figures as they ran among the metal monsters. * * * * * Overhead, the dense black smoke almost hid the roof. Eddying, slowly rising, it swirled out through the cracks and rifts in the ancient hull, up into the blazing, sunlit heat of Womar's desert sky. Of a sudden Jarl was weak to the point of sickness. Numbly, he turned and surveyed the rest of the control room with a closer scrutiny. Bank after bank of dials and indicators marked with strange symbols leered down at him like a host of huge blank eyes. Against the far wall, units with focussing plates like the viziscreens of his own solar system were ranged in a precise row. And everywhere--on every panel, every instrument--were stamped neat, stylized images of the warrior robots. The numbness in Jarl grew. He knew instinctively, without question, that this was the place sought by _Ktar_ Wassreck--the brain, the nerve center, for the shining metal monsters that were to have saved the warrior worlds. But now that he was here, what could he do? His own ignorance was a tight-drawn, all-concealing blindfold. With time enough, and skill and patience, he might perhaps have worked his way through to an understanding of how the robots were controlled. But time was the one thing he did not have. Second by second, the precious hours were ticking by. As far as he was concerned--lacking knowledge, training, understanding--he might as well have been on Venus. And so the warrior worlds would die. The Federation fleet would sweep down on Ceresta. Already, the three days given by _rey_ Gundre were running out.... Jarl shook in the grip of helpless, frustrating fury. He had come so far; yet now that he was here, he could do nothing. He cursed aloud; and as he did so, a new sound drifted to him. A familiar sound ... the sound of a space-ship's blasting rockets. He whirled; leaped back to the broad expanse of transparent plastic panel. He reached it just in time to see a great section in the top of the hull above the hold suddenly buckle and crash down. Sunlight streamed through smoke and dust. The roar of the blasting rockets echoed louder. A moment later, another huge chunk of hull tore loose and fell. Then another, and another, till the hole showed like a spreading canopy of sky above the robots. Below, the last of the primitives were fleeing. Breathing hard, pressed tight to the observation panel, Jarl watched and waited.