Sarah Bowman, Matriarch of Earth, stood at a high window and stared down at the concrete perfection of the building which was Comain.
Five thousand feet the building soared, rising like an artificial mountain from the flat plain below. Spired, terraced, sweeping in subtle curves and arching beauty, rising like something from an old tale, a fairy palace, a mound in which art and science had met and blended in enduring steel and stone. And yet this was not Comain.
Far down, buried beneath a shielding layer of rock and lead, soil and running water, protected from high explosive and atomic destruction, from radiation and natural storm, the machine which was Comain rested as it had rested for more than two centuries. An incredible complexity of crystal and wire, of tube and relay, of warped a
