would you like to _really_ talk across the country?
Speak into a gadget here and have your voice come out at the far end
of the wire?"

The Hertug's piggy little eyes blinked greedily. "It is said that in
the old days this could be done, but we have tried and have failed.
Can you do this thing?"

"I can--if we can come to an agreement first. But before I make any
promises I have to see your equipment."

This brought the usual groans of complaint about secrecy, but in the
end avarice won over taboo and the door to the holy of holies was
opened for Jason while two of the _sciuloj_, with bared and ready
daggers, stood at his sides. At almost the same instant Jason looked
in through the door he heard the sound.

Now the reaction of the human body, while remarkably fast, need
certain finite measures of time and have been measured over and over
again with a great deal of accuracy. The commands of the brain, speedy
as they may be, must be carried by sluggish nerves and put into
operation by inert lumps of muscle. Therefore to say that Jason's
reactions were instantaneous is to tell a lie, or at least exaggerate.
Only to his watchers did his actions appear to take place that fast;
they were older, and less alert, and had not had the advantage of
Pyrran survival training. So to their point of view the sacred portal
was opened and Jason vanished in a flurry of activity. Two lightning
blows sent his guardians spinning, and before they had fallen to the
floor their supposed captive was through the door and it was slammed
in their faces. Before the first dumfounded Persson could jump forward
the bolt grated home inside and the door was sealed.

Things were a little more complex than that to Jason. When the door
opened he had had a good view of the inside of the room, of a slave
cranking the handle on a crude collection of junk that could only have
been a generator. Thick wires looped across the room from the thing to
a man who stood before some blades of copper pushing at them with a
wooden stick, while above his head fat sparks leaped the gap between
two brassy spheres. As if to complete this illustration for a
bronze-age edition of "First Steps in Electricity" another cable
twisted up from the spark gap and vanished out a small window. The
entire thing might have been labeled "How to Generate A Radio Signal
in the Crudest Manner." As Jason reached this conclusion in the
smallest fraction of a second, and at almost the very s