Inside the CGC Building, completely filling the upper twenty floors, were the sections of the vast electronic brain that computed and integrated the orbits of the small artificial moons and kept the communication beams linked to them. And below the brain, occupying another four floors, were the control and monitoring rooms, in which the TV communications of a world were selected and programmed.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, the newly-elected President spoke in front of a TV camera. His dark, handsome face was coldly implacable as he said: "They wanted apartheid when they were in power; we see no reason to believe they have changed their minds. They wanted apartheid—very well, they shall continue to have apartheid!"
His image and his voice, picked up by the camera and mike, were transmitted by cable to the beam broadcaster in the old capital of Pretoria. From there, it was broadcast generally all over South Africa; at the same time, it was relayed by tight beam to Satellite Nine, which happened to be in the sky over that part of the Earth at that time.
Satellite Nine, in turn, relayed it to all the other satellites in line of sight. Satellite Two, over the eastern seaboard of North America, picked it up and automatically relayed it to the big antenna on top of New York's Circum-Global Communications Building.
There it was de-hashed and cleaned up. The static noise which it had picked up in its double flight through the ionosphere was removed; the periods of fading were strengthened, and the whole communication was smoothed out and patched up.
From the CGC Building, it was re-broadcast over the United States. A man in Bismarck, North Dakota, looked at the three-dimensional, full-color image of the President of South Africa, listened to his clear, carefully-modulated words, and said: "Serves 'em right, by George!"
Besides the world-wide television news and entertainment networks, CGC also handled person-to-person communication through its subsidiary, Intercontinental Visiphone. If the man in Bismarck had wanted to call the President of the Union of South Africa, his visiphone message would have gone out in almost exactly the same way, and the two men could have talked person-to-person, face to face. (Whether the President of South Africa would have accepted the call or not is another matter.)
From all over the world, programs and communications were picked up by the satellites and relayed to the CGC Building, where they were sorted and sent out again.
The man in charge of the technical end of the whole operation was a short, stocky, graying man named MacIlheny.