"Well, Mr. Stenson. Good of you to call. How are you?"

"Very well, thank you. And you?" When he also admitted to good health, the
caller continued: "How is the globe running? Still in synchronization?"

Victor looked across the office at his most prized possession, the big
globe of Zarathustra that Henry Stenson had built for him, supported six
feet from the floor on its own contragravity unit, spotlighted in orange
to represent the KO sun, its two satellites circling about it as it
revolved slowly.

"The globe itself is keeping perfect time, and Darius is all right, Xerxes
is a few seconds of longitude ahead of true position."

"That's dreadful, Mr. Grego!" Stenson was deeply shocked. "I must adjust
that the first thing tomorrow. I should have called to check on it long
ago, but you know how it is. So many things to do, and so little time."

"I find the same trouble myself, Mr. Stenson." They chatted for a while,
and then Stenson apologized for taking up so much of Mr. Grego's valuable
time. What he meant was that his own time, just as valuable to him, was
wasting. After the screen blanked, Grego sat looking at it for a moment,
wishing he had a hundred men like Henry Stenson in his own organization.
Just men with Stenson's brains and character; wishing for a hundred
instrument makers with Stenson's skills would have been unreasonable, even
for wishing. There was only one Henry Stenson, just as there had been only
one Antonio Stradivari. Why a man like that worked in a little shop on a
frontier planet like Zarathustra....

Then he looked, pridefully, at the globe. Alpha Continent had moved slowly