Yet the nameless, growing fear grew stronger within the Master as the days crept on and Heidkamp's experiments progressed. The future could not be foreseen ... who could know that the past might not somehow reach darkly toward the Master, and destroy him? Yet the mad passion inspired by the girl in the Time Visor gave him no rest; it grew too, waxing stronger as Heidkamp's science gradually placed her nearer to his grasp, and finally this passion outstripped even the Master's fear. Daily he summoned Heidkamp to the visiscreen, threatened him anew with endless torture if he should fail, and heard with satisfaction Heidkamp's story of progress. For the genius of the Technician, rising to the monstrous demands made upon it by the Master, was actually bringing to pass the miracle which he had commanded. When on the 28th day of the allotted thirty Heidkamp reported that all was in readiness, the Master prepared to leave his lofty haven for the first time in many months. For this expedition he chose to be accompanied by the robots, rather than by the brutal Guard; and lest a half mile of steel and glass and air should too much intervene between his thoughts and the telepathic amplifier-converter, he had two of the robots carry it between them. These two went into the elevator, but before following them, the Master walked slowly around his eyrie, appraising what he saw, and beyond that, the distances unseen. He had taken over from the Pacifist Democrats their plans for the rebirth of a world destroyed by war, and he congratulated himself that he had achieved beyond their dreams. Fair indeed was this great city, rising in miles of mighty windowed ramparts along the western bank of the purple Hudson, and fair indeed were a thousand lesser cities, set like jewels around the healing earth. And the vast fruitful farms and terraced orchards, dotted with placid lakes and webbed by shining canals, stretching to the north to break at last against the desolate shell torn slopes of the Highlands, and to the west into the cauldron of the sunset, these were things of wonder and beauty too. But for all his building and possession of this vast achievement, the Master knew that nowhere beneath that darkening sky could he count a single friend, or any person loyal except thru fear or greed. And as he turned away, he saw the crimson of the west spread over the whole dome of the heavens like a great flame, and the city and the landscape seemed to flow with blood. With a deep foreboding he shuddered into the elevator, bidding two more robots after him, and rocket-like they plummeted into the depths of the great building, in the safe and familiar light of the phosphene ceiling.