Moreover, it was not the question closest to Gala Tropile's heart at that moment--nor, for that matter, the question closest to Citizeness Germyn's. The question that underlay the thoughts of both was: _I wonder what happened to my husband._ It was strange, but true, that the answers to all their questions were very nearly the same. * * * * * The Alla-Narova mind said sharply: "Glenn, come back!" Tropile withdrew from scanning the distant dark street. He laughed soundlessly. "I was watching my wife. God, we're giving them fits down there! The Pyramids must be churning things up, too--the sky is full of auroral displays. Looks like there's plenty of h-f bouncing around the atmosphere." "Pay attention!" the Alla-Narova mind commanded. "All right." Obediently, Tropile returned to the war he was waging. It was a strange conflict, strangely fought. Tropile's mind searched the abysses and tunnels of the Pyramid planet, and what he sensed or saw was immediately communicated to all of the awakened Components who were his allies. It was a godlike position. Was he sane? There was no knowing. Sanity no longer meant anything to Tropile. He was beyond such human affairs as lunacy or its reverse. An insane man is one who is out of joint with his environment. Tropile was himself his environment. His mind encompassed two planets and the space between. He saw with a thousand eyes. He worked with a thousand hands. And he struck mighty blows. The weakness of a network that reaches everywhere is that it is everywhere vulnerable. If a teletype repeater in Omaha garbles a single digit, printing units in Atlanta and Bangor will type out errors. Tropile, by striking at the Pyramids' net at a thousand points, garbled their communications and made them nearly useless. More, he took the Pyramid network for his own. The Tropile-pulse sped through the neurone guides of the Pyramid net, and what it encountered it mastered, and what it mastered it changed. The Pyramids discovered that they had been attacked. Frantically (if they felt frenzy), the Pyramids replaced Components; the Tropile-pulse woke the new ones. Unbelievingly (did they know how to "believe"?), the Pyramids isolated contaminated circuits; the Tropile-pulse bypassed them. Desperately (or joyously or uffishly--one term fits exactly as well as another), the Pyramids returned to shove-and-haul, and there was much destruction, and some Components died. But by then, the Components had reprogrammed themselves. * * * * * The first job had been the matter of finding hands for the Tropile-brain to work with. Bring hands in, then! Tropile commanded the Pyramids' network and obediently it was done. The Translation mechanism, the electrostatic scythe that had harvested so many crops from the wristwatch mines, suffered a change and went to work not for the pickers but for the fruit.