The Siege of Eternity

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With affection and gratitude this book is dedicated to my shipmates on the schooner Rembrandt van Ryjn, who know why.

THE WORLD WAS GOING ABOUT ITS EVERYDAY BUSINESS WHEN something happened that was quite strange.

For one part of the world, that everyday business it was going about amounted to nothing more than watching its television screens. Some of the world's people gazed at a prizefight in Kenya, some watched cop shows and soap operas in the Americas, a tiny fraction sat somnolent before the finals of the English National snooker matches. When those programs were interrupted for a news bulletin that part of the world was seriously annoyed.

The bulletin that interrupted their programs quickly made the viewers forgive the annoyance-at least, it did for that fraction of those viewers who believed it was real. The bulletin said that a Genuine message from space had been received on a seldom used radio frequency. Most of the message was indecipherable. A small portion was easier to decode and it turned out to be a crude form of video. Before long the simple animated drawing it displayed filled all the world's screens.

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