“We’re not going to get a disarmament agreement out of them any time soon,” Gerhardt said as he preceded Hoffman down the platform steps into the fourth chamber compound.
“They’re more afraid of each other than they are of us, right now, and nobody’s going to hand in their weapons until the situation is settled.”
“Who do you think will come out on top?”
Gerhardt shrugged. ”No bets. They’re all tough sons of bitches; my hopes are for Mirsky.”
“He’s been in the third chamber library more often than any of us,” Hoffman said.
“He has more to catch up on,” Gerhardt said. ”Russians don’t want soldiers with a liberal education.”
“I suppose we should be happy with a cease fire and separate camps.”
Gerhardt opened the mess door for her and she passed through into the cafeteria. Four agricultural scientists—one man and three women—waited for her with charts and slates.
She shook hands with all of them and took a seat. Gerhardt received a meager lunch from the vendor and sat at the next table; this was not his direct concern.
“Food programs,” Hoffman said. ”Fanning and subsistence. Okay. Show me what we have to do.”
Push came to shove barely eighteen hours after the conference in the bungalow. The first chamber storm settled even more quickly than it started; the winds suddenly stopped, the clouds unleashed a few more drops and then dissipated. The tubelight brightened and the air felt warmer.
Belozersky ordered a platoon to surround the bungalow and capture Mirsky. The ostensive reason was Mirsky’s lack of dedication to the cause of socialism; but all three Zampolits felt the Lieutenant General was weak and would soon make concessions to Hoffman that the Soviets could ill afford.
The platoon moved in quickly and surrounded the command center, bringing their AKVs to bear on the twenty guards. The guards surrendered without resistance and Belozersky approached the bungalow door to place Mirsky under arrest.
Three burly troopers kicked in the door and poked their rifles through, keeping their heads and bodies back.
“Comrade General!” Belozersky shouted, his voice breaking. “You have violated the confidence of your men. In the name of the newly reconstituted Supreme Soviet, you are under arrest!” The troopers swung around the door frame and into the bungalow. Pletnev sat up on a bunk, blinking sleepily.
“General Mirsky’s not here,” he said thickly. ”Is there anything I can do for you?”
Vielgorsky had napped briefly after the conference with Mirsky, then taken advantage of the weakening storm to move three trucks with fifty soldiers out of the first chamber, and to ride the ninety tube train—reserved exclusively for Russian use—into the fourth chamber.
The plan was to have him out of the way when Belozersky arrested Mirsky, just in case something went wrong. For a few hours, then, he could enjoy the fourth chamber woods. He especially enjoyed the sight of soldiers in the Development Detail bringing down trees and hauling them to the water.
Stories of the conquest of the east and the building of the trans-Siberian railway had enchanted him as a boy; now he visualized something similar in the Potato, a series of Soviet settlements linked by roads, clearing fields for farms and building cabins. Something good might come out of this fiasco after all, he thought—a purer, less corrupt and more tightly controlled socialist community, which could eventually take over the asteroid and return to Earth to complete the task Lenin had begun eighty-years before.
Things were moving with astonishing speed already; only nine days ago, they had made their landing, and now they had been ceded territory in the most attractive of the Potato’s seven chambers. If this didn’t demonstrate the weakness of their opponents, what possible could?
Three SSTs approached him. The lead trooper carried a few papers, no doubt for him to sign in his capacity as director of fourth chamber exploitation.
“Colonel,” the first soldier said, pulling a pistol from behind the papers. He pointed the pistol at Vielgorsky and tipped his cap higher.
“Mirsky,” Vielgorsky said, losing none of his control.
The other two soldiers were Pogodin and the scientist Pritikin. Each carried an AKV slung over his shoulder. Mirsky took Vielgorsky’s arm and poked the pistol into his side, near the kidneys. ”Not a word, please.”
“What are you doing?” Vielgorsky whispered harshly.
Mirsky thrust the pistol forward with more force.
“Quiet. Your rat is gnawing a hole in my bungalow.”
They walked with measured steps to a truck waiting by the lakeshore.
Pogodin unceremoniously pushed Vielgorsky into the back and threw a tarp over him, climbing in after and lightly tapping the barrel of the AKV on the bulge his head made.
Mirsky climbed behind the steering column and looked across the dark sand to the soldiers in the woods. Another group was playing lapta—a kind of baseball—with branches and pinecones; none seemed concerned with the truck or its occupants.
“Where are we going, General?” Vielgorsky asked from the rear, voice muffled by the tarp.
“Quiet, sir,” Pogodin said, prodding him again with the rifle.