Glancing through the observation window into the battle plotting room below, he studied the positions of the fleets as they appeared on the large wall diagram of the solar system.

Disregarding the distraction offered by the moving figures of the few officers and technicians on duty by the map, he fixed the positions of the fleets into his mind. He would have need for a clear visual picture until he adapted to the mental images the computer would feed into his brain. He worked with furious haste, yet each step was meticulously precise—everything depended on his grasping the reins of battle from the computer and successfully twisting its authority to his own purposes.

Grasping the viewing switch, he threw it on. Pinpoints of light flared deep within his brain and seemed to blot his vision. Closing his eyes, his brain fought for perspective. Gradually, it focused and perceived the solar system, resplendent with sun, planets, moons, and men of war. Enveloping each ship were lines of force, scintillating sharp and hard; forming cosmic vortexes as the lesser computers on board followed the master's directives and distorted the ether around the ships, seeking to build a pattern to penetrate the opposing fields and engulf the enemy men of war.

A moment, and the game was on. Ruy grasped the "Manual" switch before him, pulled hard, and dropped his hands to the keyboard before him.

The General, who was known in military circles as a good Joe, but a stickler for the theory of war, relaxed languidly at his desk in the small office off the Battle Room. The other officers on duty milled around the plotting board within his eyesight awaiting the end of the evening shift.

It was strange and new to relax on the job after so many years of fleet duty. But staff duty to the master computer was good, politically. He was getting along in years, and a few more contacts here might mean a separate fleet command of his own, perhaps in pursuit of the invader, if the computers could ever break the deadlock.

Suddenly, the sweet reverie of the General was snapped like a tight tension cable. A gong on the wall clanged rapidly three times and a red flashing light next to the gong told him what his ears refused to believe. The computer had been switched to manual. He had received no such instructions. In fact, the computer hadn't been on manual since the war started.

"Captain, who ordered manual control?" he barked as he sprang to the doorway of the Battle Room.

"I don't know, Sir," stammered the Captain. His manner and bearing were those of a man who had just been faced with a problem of cataclysmic proportions.

"Well check with the control room—on the double—before our fleet gets out of defensive position." His parade ground roar snapped the Captain out of the catelepsy which had enveloped him and sent him scurrying into the corridor.

An almost hysterical shout whirled the General back to the plotting board.

"Sir, our fleet is attacking—attacking!"

"What? Where?" asked the General, his eyes darting over the board in a frantic effort to orient himself.

"Here, Sir, see. The positions are changing gradually in an unusual pattern. A patrol ship, a destroyer, and a cruiser have all gone right into the enemy vortex field," analyzed the Major.

"Yes, I see—But with the enemy concentrating his ships orthogonally—he'll build a vortex that will disintegrate each and every ship of ours near the vortex," said the General, his mind coming up to full battle speed as it grasped the situation. "My God! Can't they see that they're going to certain death?"

A gong sounded in a muffled sort of way in the plotting room below Ruy, as a gentle buzz told him that the computer had relinquished control.

His fingers began to play rapidly over the keys. Swift orders of strategy were transmitted through steel conduits deep into the computer vaults of the building. There, the orders were transposed into detailed tactics and beamed throughout the solar system. And as his fingers limbered to the keys, he played a deadly tune, a concerto of death.

The fleet grew alive with a sudden awareness; it seemed to be a thing alive, straining at its bonds in response to the music played into its computers and controls. Suddenly, the fleet sprang forward. A destroyer shot out into the midst of the enemy fleet, launching all of its energy in one tremendous lurch—only to go down in a flaming wreck as the enemy ships swerved and concentrated on it. And a second ship, and then a third ship repeated the frightful maneuver, until the whole heavens were lighted with the flaming novae of berserk atomic drives.

"General, sir," said the Lieutenant, with sweat rolling from his brow as he saluted.

"Yes, Lieutenant," said the General looking away from the battle map of the solar system.

"We can't make any headway against the control room door. Must be solid steel. Whoever got in there must have fused it shut."

"Well, get a welding torch," said the General, his eyes going back to watch the devastation of the fleet. "We've got to get in—get that computer back on automatic. Get explosives, if necessary."

"We've sent for a welding torch already, sir. It'll be here in a few minutes."

"All right. Send someone for hand grenades too. We've got to stop this sabotage before the fleet is annihilated. They're losing ships every minute."

"Sir," interposed the Captain standing nearby, "maybe we can cut off the computer room someway. I know it's a direct conduit, right to the vaults from the control room, but maybe we can cut the conduits and let the ships fall back on their emergency circuits."

"Looks like a possible alternative, Captain, though we'd put the computer out of operation for several days," said the General. "But we're losing our fleet this way."

Seven, eight, nine great men of war went down before the blazing force fields of the enemy, who pounced on every sacrifice offered to it by the computer.

The Lieutenant turned his eyes from the incandescent glare of the thick steel conduit glowing red under the finger of the acetylene torch. "General, its extremely resistant to cutting. I doubt if we can cut through it before they finally get the door and frame cut away up in the control room."

"Keep at it, boy. We've got to get through at the saboteur one way or another. Do the best you can. The boys in the fleet are counting on you. They're going down to certain death while we delay."

With the last terms of the new equations of strategy played into the computer, Ruy sat back, gave a sigh, opened his eyes, and slipped the electrodes from his wrist. His job was almost done. If he could keep the others from this control panel for another half hour, the computer could operate on his equations fully, and the battle would be won.

The first ships from Earth had already gone down in flames, expendable sacrifices to his purpose. But they were not dying in vain. The end result would be—must be—victory.

Wars are fought by strategy, but also by sacrifice. Every general must send troops into battle, must expect to sacrifice to make the enemy commit himself in the desired way, and so make victory possible.

This was what Ruy believed. He believed it deeply, deeply enough to throw aside his career as a rising young theoretical mathematics officer of the fleet and to go over the heads of his unconvinced superiors, with all their unread reports and unanswered recommendations from subordinates, in the only way a man of action could—by taking things into his own hands, and staking his life on the gamble.

The General, eyes riveted to the board, winced with pain as ship after ship roiled the heavens with flaming death. And as he watched, a gradual subtle design became apparent. For every ship he had lost, his ships had taken a similar tally—for each sacrifice, a trap was sprung and a similar toll taken. Computers did not sacrifice, did not send men out to certain death. Therefore a sacrifice was greedily snapped up as a mistake of the enemy. And such greed snapped the trap. One move forced the next, once the bait was taken.

As the theme of the theory formed in the General's mind, he suddenly muttered: "Even exchange will balance a computer's potential—but a series of forced, even-exchanges can distort a fleet's position from optimum.... I never realized it before—an optimum move is not an optimum move—if it's a forced move."

He turned from the board and spoke quietly to the men who stood in hushed groups watching the flaming battle.

"Gentlemen, we are winning a great victory; the war will soon be over."

The door to the computer room toppled outward, frame and all, after several ceaseless hours of cutting. The impact left the hallway of armed men silent and still, like specters in the unreal light from the glowing acetylene torch. Just inside the doorway stood a man, his youth belied by wise and thoughtful eyes, grinding a cigarette under his foot. And as he stepped through the wrecked and twisted door frame not a hand was raised against him.