"Yes?" cried Perat, all alert.
As his mouth was forming the word, his probe was collapsing within her mind, and her own flashed briefly into his mind. The hand under the pillow held a Faeg, aimed at her chest. But the safety catch was still on.
"Excellency?" came Gorph's tinny voice.
"Yes, Gorph? Have you replaced the columns?"
"Replaced"...? That seemed to indicate that the field crew had followed her forged order, then returned the columns by Perat's countercommand, relayed telepathically through Gorph. But once all the great rods were drawn, replacing them did not halt the strain-pile. The negative potential would keep on increasing geometrically with time, as planned, to the final goal of joint catastrophe and stalemate.
Some sort of knowledge was drumming silently at her threshold of consciousness. Something she couldn't quite grasp. About the woman in the stereop? Possibly. It would come to her soon.
Ignoring Perat's gloating smile, she looked casually at the metron dial, and her heart leaped with elation, for the dial had ceased revolving. Electrons must be flowing from the center of the ship through the walls, outward toward the surface two thousand miles away, and the massive currents were probably jamming all the wall circuits.
Within minutes, finis.
Could she really rest, now? She was beginning to feel very tired, almost sleepy. Her duty had been done, and nothing could ever be important again.
Gorph was answering his master over the speaker: "Yes, your excellency, we got them back, that is to say, excepting that one of the five is only half-way out of its cradle."