The Martian Room, fifteen stories down, was a big place, occupying
almost half of the floor space of one corner tower. It had been fitted
to resemble one of the ruined buildings of the ancient and vanished
race of Mars who were the ancestors of Terran humanity. One whole side
of the room was a gigantic cine-solidograph screen, on which the
gullied desolation of a Martian landscape was projected; in the course
of about two hours, the scene changed from sunrise through daylight
and night to sunrise again.

It was high noon when they entered and found a table; by the time they
had finished their dinner, the night was ending and the first glow of
dawn was tinting the distant hills. They sat for a while, watching the
light grow stronger, then got up and left the table.

There were five men at a table near them; they had come in before the
stars had grown dim, and the waiters were just bringing their first
dishes. Two were Assassins, and the other three were of a breed Verkan
Vall had learned to recognize on any time-line--the arrogant,
cocksure, ambitious, leftist politician, who knows what is best for
everybody better than anybody else does, and who is convinced that he
is inescapably right and that whoever differs with him is not only an
ignoramus but a venal scoundrel as well. One was a beefy man in a
gold-laced cream-colored dress tunic; he had thick lips and a
too-ready laugh. Another was a rather monkish-looking young man who
spoke earnestly and rolled his eyes upward, as though at some
celestial vision. The third had the faint powdering of gray in his
black hair which was, among the Akor-Neb people, almost the only
indication of advanced age.

"Of course it is; the whole thing is a fraud," the monkish young man