e to play that part. And I'll want to
familiarize myself with Akor-Neb weapons and combat techniques. I
think that will be all, chief."

* * * * *

The last of the tall city-units of Ghamma were sliding out of sight as
the ship passed over them--shaft-like buildings that rose two or three
thousand feet above the ground in clumps of three or four or six, one
at each corner of the landing stages set in series between them. Each
of these units stood in the middle of a wooded park some five miles
square; no unit was much more or less than twenty miles from its
nearest neighbor, and the land between was the uniform golden-brown of
ripening grain, crisscrossed with the threads of irrigation canals and
dotted here and there with sturdy farm-village buildings and tall,
stacklike granaries. There were a few other ships in the air at the
fifty-thousand-foot level, and below, swarms of small airboats darted
back and forth on different levels, depending upon speed and
direction. Far ahead, to the northeast, was the shimmer of the Red Sea
and the hazy bulk of Asia Minor beyond.

Verkan Vall--the Lord Virzal of Verkan, temporarily--stood at the
glass front of the observation deck, looking down. He was a different
Verkan Vall from the man who had talked with Tortha Karf in the
latter's office, two days before. The First Level cosmeticists had
worked miracles upon him with their art. His skin was a soft
chocolate-brown, now; his hair was jet-black, and so were his eyes.
And in his subconscious mind, instantly available to consciousness,
was a vast body of knowledge about conditions on the Akor-Neb sector,
as well as a complete command of the local language, all hypnotically
acquired.

He knew that he was looking down upon one of the minor provincial
cities of a very respectably advanced civilization. A civilization
which built its cities vertically, since it had learned to counteract
gravitation. A civilization which still depended upon natural cereals
for food, but one which had learned to make the most efficient use of
its soil. The network of dams and irrigation canals which he saw was
as good as anything on his own paratime level. The wide dispersal of
buildings, he knew, was a heritage of a series of disastrous atomic
wars of several thousand years before; the Akor-Neb people had come to
love the wide inter-vistas of open country and forest, and had
continued to scatter their buildings, even aft