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have no plans, by a psychologist. As a mere carrier of human freight, it would be a practical failure, but it is a lot more likely to capture the imagination of an illiterate peasant than a dun colored sphere."
    "How large will, ah, would she be?"
    Toriman turned to Limpkin. "She'll be about seven miles long, a third of a mile in diameter, and have a maximum wingspread of three and a half miles. The tail will rise about five-eighths of a mile above the hull." Toriman sipped some wine; Limpkin collapsed into his chair, trying to decide whether to laugh or pity Toriman. "Has it captured your imagination, Limpkin?" questioned Toriman solicitously.
    Limpkin could only grimace. "Are you serious about this thing? Really? Even if those of the First or some other World could build it, this World hasn't a chance."
    "I agree it is beyond us now, and perhaps it shall remain so forever, but this is a minor consideration. The real point here is that the original builders left enough material to start. We've even a set of engines, or what seems to be a set, sitting below the Yards." The General lit another cigar; Limpkin saw that the gold ring on his left hand had, predictably, the horse and hand crest on its face. "Here, then, is my plan. First, we must establish a route to the Yards; once Yuma is removed through a minor war, the Tyne River will serve us splendidly. Once the way to the Yards is open, the building of the ship may commence. I estimate that a proper schedule should allow for about two hundred and fifty years." Limpkin coughed lightly. "But of course the ship will never be completed.
    "You see, Limpkin, the main, indeed the only purpose of the ship will be to become a rallying point about which the will to power may awaken and be nourished. And, here comes the tricky part.
    "All the plans that I have shown you for the ship are completely theoretical. Even those that I found in the Yards have translated from their rune-language into our own on a very unsure basis. For all we know the ship might collapse of its own weight, or might blow up on takeoff, or—the possibilities are endless and this is why we must never allow the ship to be finished. The effort that will flow from the resurrected spirit of the people and directed at the ship to make it their escape hatch must be covertly rechanneled back into the body of the nation proper.
    "Allow me to elaborate. You, man, today go out to one of our outlying villages and issue an order: build a dam here. Why? the people ask you. For your own betterment, you answer, and for the growth and strength of mother Caroline. Yes sir, right away, sir, they answer. They will attack the stream immediately with gratifying fervor, until one of them notices the land about him. He and his father and his ancestors for a thousand years before him have worked that sterile soil, died of the plagues left in it from a hundred dark ages. Why build the dam? What good will it do? Nothing can touch this land, nothing can change the cast of the hell that he has been born into. And for mother Caroline? Was it mother Doria so many years ago? or mother Aberdeen? or . . . " Toriman shrugged. "The man is impermanent, the states transient, the efforts at improvement swallowed by the everlasting agony of the World; only the World exists and will continue to exist and to bend to it one's will appears to be beyond the power of God Himself.
    "But a year later you return to the settlement; the spring floods have washed away the pathetic efforts of last year. You issue the same order. But this time when they ask you why, you will have a different answer: 'You, my beloved people, will build a dam for the ship. You will build it so that eight power lines may run into a far-off place called the Yards where this mighty mechanism is abuilding. A starship, a way out. I do not ask you to try to tame this hostile land, I only ask you to honestly work upon it so that we may someday leave it behind.' Then you will produce