"There it is, sir," Cleve reported, after some ten minutes of manipulation, and the vast structure of the miniature world flashed into being upon his plate. "You may notify the fleet--coordinates H 11.62, RA 124-31-16, and Dx about 173.2." The report made and the assistants out of the room, the captain turned to the observer and saluted gravely. "We have always known, sir, that the Service had _men_; but I had no idea that any one man could possibly do, on the spur of the moment, what you have just done--unless that man happened to be Lyman Cleveland." "Oh, it doesn't...." the observer began, but broke off, muttering unintelligibly at intervals; then swung the visiray beam toward the Earth. Soon a face appeared upon the plate; the keen, but careworn face of Virgil Samms! "Hello, Lyman," his voice came clearly from the speaker, and the Captain gasped--his ultra-wave observer and sometime clerk was Lyman Cleveland himself, probably the greatest living expert in beam transmission! "I knew that you'd do something, if it could be done. How about it--can the others install similar sets on their ships? I'm betting that they can't." "Probably not," Cleveland frowned in thought. "This is a patchwork affair, made of gunny sacks and hay-wire. I'm holding it together by main strength and awkwardness, and even at that, it's apt to go to pieces any minute." "Can you rig it up for photography?" "I think so. Just a minute--yes, I can. Why?" "Because there's something going on out there that neither we nor apparently the pirates know anything about. The Admiralty seems to think that it's the Jovians again, but we don't see how it can be--if it is, they have developed a lot of stuff that none of our agents has even suspected," and he recounted briefly what Costigan had reported to him, concluding: "Then there was a burst of interference--on the _ultra-band_, mind you--and I've heard nothing from him since. Therefore I want you to stay out of the battle entirely. Stay as far away from it as you can and still get good pictures of everything that happens. I will see that orders are issued to the _Chicago_ to that effect." "But listen...." "Those are orders!" snapped Samms. "It is of the utmost importance that we know every detail of what is going to happen. The answer is pictures. The only possibility of obtaining pictures is that machine you have just developed. If the fleet wins, nothing will be lost. If the fleet loses--and I am not half as confident of success as the Admiral is--the _Chicago_ doesn't carry enough power to decide the issue, and we will have the pictures to study, which is all-important. Besides, we have probably lost Conway Costigan today, and we don't want to lose _you_, too." Cleveland remained silent, pondering this startling news, but the grizzled Captain, veteran of the Fourth Jovian War that he was, was not convinced. "We'll blow them out of space, Mr. Samms!" he declared.