Then, with his power beginning to flicker, he shut himself down, and instituted a single wake-up procedure to bring him back up when, as he had calculated, his new and highly eccentric orbit brought him back into the Liesco system in 1,862 years. Holtzman's actions resulted in the widespread and rapid development 'of Holtzman Wave generators, bringing on the Wars of Reunification, which raged through the inhabited worlds. So ferocious were these struggles (and so long-lasting) chat Holtzman did not reveal his existence during his second return to the Ueseo System in 5694 B.C. He did, however, effect needed repairs within the limits of his damaged servos. Detecting no malevolent activity on his third return, Holtzman sent a brief wave message to Liesco, not knowing that it was now a prison world administered by a few orbital computers. On detecting radio messages from the supposedly primitive planet, these machines immediately sent emergency calls to the Provincial Warden's office on Maktiun III. The Warden sent several technicians to Liesco to find the transmitter and report how the prisoners had managed to build it. Holtzman, of course, overheard all these messages and knew that investigators were on the way. Still insanely paranoid, he decided to protect himself fully: assuming that everything he transmitted would be recorded for the investigation, he "published ' (as he described it) his discovery of the Planar Effect. He then dropped back into quiescence, all his receptors tuned toward Liesco. When the technicians inspected the recordings made by the guardian machinery, they were flabbergasted: ail accounts had Holtzman dead and lost in interstellar space. They first suspected a bizarre hoax, and turned to the orbiting computers, which were subjected to extensive diagnostic tests. Of course, nothing untoward was discovered. Meanwhile, the Warden played the recordings to several experts. One was a historian, and he recognized the archaic speech of the Great Dark Ages. Another was a theoretical wave mechanic named Staivan, chief engineer of House Varrik. Staivan, finding nothing inconsistent in the theories and mechanisms described m the tapes, tried to follow the instructions and generate a Node for this "Planar Effect" He succeeded. The first manufactured Shield was a simple flat effect, about a meter in diameter, admitting radiation in all but the long radio frequencies. Staivan did not realize what he had, though, until he accidentally dropped a screwdriver into the field and saw it gently lowered through the plane of the effect. Staivan reported at once that whatever these messages were, they were no hoax. He later took the field apparatus into the courtyard to test its resistance to a variety of missiles of increasing power, and, at last, a workman's cutting laser. Thus, as his last discovery, he learned that the Planar Effect did not mix well with coherent light.