The sun of that forgotten day sank behind banks of purple cloud, and as lights glowed throughout the village and from the windows of the house, the watcher from the future remembered from old stories the comfort and intimacy that would be within its walls. He thought of the radiant golden girl whose eyes caressed her companion, the girl whose bearing had the freedom and intelligence which now had almost passed from the women of the world, because like the men they knew themselves absolute slaves of the despot in the tower. The Master felt an irrational surge of rage toward the girl, long since dead, whose living body he could behold in the time screen. What right had she to look like that, with open, fearless eyes, oblivious of his power?
He slammed the visor down on his desk with a vicious curse. "Technician Heidkamp, at once," he snarled. In a moment Heidkamp, gravely saluting, appeared on the visiscreen.
"Heidkamp, you spoke of a time travelling machine. Can you build me one?"
"That is a far more complex and difficult matter than the building of the visor, your Excellency. The formulae are not yet complete...."
"In thirty days you must build me a conveyance to bring a woman to me from 1940, alive and unharmed."
"But your Excellency! The formulae, the experiments, the safety factors!" Heidkamp's imperturbability for once was shaken at the Master's preposterous demand.
The Master's breath came fast with rage. "Have you forgotten your lesson of this afternoon? If you cannot carry out my instructions, the execution of the weather experts will prove child's play compared to the tortures I shall devise for you. Report at thirteen tomorrow." He touched the screen into darkness, and slept at his desk until the morning sun was high over the city.
The rest of the morning he devoted to conferences with his captains in various parts of the world, in regard to their keeping of the Peace. His secret police were everywhere, and were themselves watched by spies, who underwent periodic hypnotic examinations in the Master's presence, lest they should be disloyal. So perfect was the organization that nowhere could a man say a word against the Master or his Peace and be safe from his vengeance.
But of late that vengeance had been withheld as its wielder watched the growth of a revolutionary society, the New Day, whose hope spread among his subjects swift as fungus thru rotting wood. They were building power for his overthrow and for establishment of the democratic world state which he had so falsely promised, and the Master was aware that they were the most brilliant and determined antagonists he had known since the establishment of his Peace. They had found ways to screen their thoughts against his detectors, but no way to keep his agents out of their organization, so that his spies sat in their high councils and betrayed them.
So the Master deemed himself safe from them, since he would know before they struck, and he leisurely prepared cruel traps for their undoing. And he promised himself that he would make their punishment so fearful that he could count himself safe against another revolt for a generation. But for the while he held his hand.