And the days passed. The arrow rushed on toward its target. And robot 532-03-2615 sat at the controls of the flagship Rover, its metal fingers toying with the instruments, its lens eyes occasionally turning toward the master atomic clock, with its date hand that never seemed to move, its hour hand that moved slowly, its minute hand, its second hand that moved swiftly, and its vernier hand that could not be seen because it was a blur that circled the dial a thousand times a second.
The days passed. The day and the hour and the minute and the second—and the ten millionth of a second—arrived. It was the final combination of settings for all the pointers on the master clock. A contact was made. Sub-atomic power did things that multiplied a cosmic minus-the-square-root-of-minus-one by the space-drive field.
The Sun was a glowing ball of fire. The Earth and the Moon were twin stars that stood out in the infinite blackness, causing all other stars to retreat into infinite black depths.
The arrow hung poised, visible from Earth. Then it began to disperse as though caught by some cosmic wind of space, the parts drifting slowly into a new formation.
2615 stood up and went to the door to the room where it had kept Larry and Stella. It entered, closing the door. Vilbis was looking through the glass wall of his prison to a large screen that was bringing a terrestrial broadcast from video cameras situated on the several satellite stations with orbits just above the Earth's atmosphere. Pwowp was giving commands to the fleet. And on the radio, "The ships of the fleet are now entering their defense pattern around the Earth," a voice was saying. "In a few minutes Fleet Admiral William Ford will give us our first glimpse of that arch criminal of modern times, Dictator Vilbis. The flagship Rover is readily distinguished from the other ships of the fleet because of its blue color. Right now it's over Africa—invisible from the surface of the planet. All the ships are invisible from the surface of the planet. It's only out here on the space platforms that they can be seen at all. Though it can't be noticed, those ships are spiralling in toward the Earth. A few of them are already taking the sharp drop to avoid the Moon. If you watch closely you may see one or more of them pass in front of the Moon—but you'll have to look sharp because they are going in the opposite direction from the Moon, and take less than a second to cross its face."
Various views of ships appeared on the viewscreen. Vilbis swallowed nervously when the flagship appeared.
"Fleet Admiral Ford is scheduled to turn on his video beam any moment now. He's the hero of this war. His strategy is admitted to have shortened the war by at least a year. But the main attraction, the feature, will of course be Vilbis. It is seldom that a war criminal of his stature is actually captured and brought to trial. Something is delaying Fleet Admiral Ford. Let's switch back to the Earth station in contact with the flagship and see if they know what the delay is."
The door opened. 2615 appeared behind two figures in full dress uniform and helmets. Larry and Stella. Vilbis studied their appearance with approval. Their pale skin had been darkened with grease paint. Even so, their pallor showed through.
Vilbis marveled—until he realized that their present appearance, their reactions, were the result of almost eleven months of specialized conditioning. Conditioning that had slowly taken possession of them, destroying their will.
"You must look exactly like victors bringing home the prize," 2615 was saying. "Expression and voice tone are important."