Frost studied them. Crude, yet bearing the patina of intelligentdesign; functional, yet somehow extending beyond pure function.

It was then that Man became his hobby.

High, in a permanent orbit, Solcom, like a blue star, directed allactivities upon the Earth, or tried to.

There was a power which opposed Solcom.

There was the Alternate.

When man had placed Solcom in the sky, invested with the power torebuild the world, he had placed the Alternate somewhere deep below thesurface of the Earth. If Solcom sustained damage during the normalcourse of human politics extended into atomic physics, then Divcom, sodeep beneath the Earth as to be immune to anything save totalannihilation of the glove, was empowered to take over the processes ofrebuilding.

Now it so fell that Solcom was damaged by a stray atomic missile, andDivcom was activated. Solcom was able to repair the damage and continueto function, however.

Divcom maintained that any damage to Solcom automatically placed theAlternate in control.

Solcom, though, interpreted the directive as meaning "irreparabledamage" and, since this had not been the case, continued the functions ofcommand.

Solcom possessed mechanical aides upon the surface of Earth. Divcom,originally, did not. Both possessed capacities for their design andmanufacture, but Solcom, First-Activated of Man, had had a considerablenumerical lead over the Alternate at the time of the Second Activation.

Therefore, rather than competing on a prouction-basis, which would havebeen hopeless, Divcom took to the employment of a more devious means toobtain command.

Divcom created a crew of robots immune to the orders of Solcom anddesigned to go to and fro in the Earth and up and down in it, seducingthe machines already there. They overpowered those whom they couldoverpower and they installed new circuits, such as those they themselves