THE COSMIC COMPUTER

Back Forward Menu

to the communications center to get the telecast station, the radio
beacon, and the inside-screen[Pg 113] system into operation. There were
a good many things that had to be turned on manually, and more things
that had been left on, forty years ago, and now had to be repowered or
replaced. They worked at it most of the night; before morning, almost
everything was working, and they were sending a signal across
twenty-eight million miles to Storisende, on Poictesme.

It was late evening, Storisende time, but Rodney Maxwell, who must have
been camping beside his own screen, came on at once, which is to say
five and a half minutes later.

"Well, I see you got in somewhere. Where are you, and how is everything?"

Then he picked up a cigar out of an ashtray in front of him and lit it,
waiting.