AND CITIZEN GERMYN fell into the unsuspected trap. Avoiding Connectivity, he thought of Glenn Tropile—and the unfelt h-f pulses found him out.
He didn’t see the Eye that formed above him. He didn’t feel the gathering of forces that formed his trap. He didn’t know that he was seized, charged, catapulted through space, caught, halted and drained. It happened too fast.
One moment he was in his bed; the next moment he was—elsewhere. There wasn’t anything in between.
It had happened to hundreds of thousands of Components before him, but, for Citizen Germyn, what happened was in some ways different. He was not embalmed in nutrient fluid, formed and programmed to take his part in the Pyramid-structure, for he had not been selected by the Pyramid but by that single wild Component, Tropile. He a
