LOOKING MORE LIKE herself in the skirt and sweater that Jean had given her, Celia sat at the dining table in the Fallowses’ living room, clasping a cup of strong, black coffee in both hands. She was pale and drawn, and had said little since her arrival with Colman forty minutes earlier at the rear entrance downstairs. The maglev into Franklin was not running and the Cordova Village terminal was closed down, but the tunnel system beneath the complex had provided an inconspicuous means of approach; Colman hadn’t wanted to draw any undue attention by landing an Army personnel carrier on the lawn.
“Starting to feel a little better?” Jean asked as she refilled Celia’s cup. Celia nodded. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to lie down somewhere and rest for half an hour before you leave? It might do you a lot of good.” Celia shook her head. Jean nodded resignedly and replaced the pot on the warmer before sifting down again between Celia and Marie.
Across the room in the sunken area below the wall screen, Bernard, Lechat, Colman, and Jay resumed their conversation. “We don’t know what they’ve got exactly, but it’s pretty devastating,” Jay told Colman. “We figure they’ve already tested it. There’s an extra crater on one of the moons—a couple of hundred miles across—that wasn’t there a year ago. Imagine if whatever did that was to hit the ship.”
“You think that’s really a possibility?” Colman asked, looking concerned and doubtful at the same time.
“It’s how the Chironians have been working all along,” Lechat said. “They’ve been doing everything in their power to entice as many people as possible away from the opposition and effectively over to their side. Haven’t they done it with us? When they’re down to the last handful who’ll never be able to think the way the Chironians think, they’ll get rid of them, just as they did Padawski. That’s how their society has always worked. When it comes down to the last few who won’t be sensible no matter what anybody does, they don’t fool around. And they’ll do the same thing with the ship if Sterm makes one threatening move with those weapons up there. I’m convinced of it. The Chironians took out their insurance a long time ago. That would be typical of how they think too.”
Colman frowned and shook his head with a sigh as he thought about it. “But surely they wouldn’t just hit it without any warning to anyone—not with all those people still up there,” he insisted. “Wouldn’t they say something first...let Sterm know what he’s up against?”
“I don’t know,” Bernard said dubiously. “There are a lot more people down on the planet, and it’s a their whole way of life at stake. Maybe they wouldn’t. Who knows exactly how the Chironians think when all the chips are down? Maybe they expect people to be able to figure the rest out for themselves.”
Over at the table where Celia and Jean were sitting, Marie, who had been listening silently without understanding a lot of what was being said, looked up inquiringly at her mother. Jean smiled and squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“So what is it they’ve got?” Colman asked again. “Missiles wouldn’t be any use to them, and they know it. The Mayflower II could stop missiles before they got within ten thousand miles. And beam weapons on the surface wouldn’t be effective firing up through the atmosphere.” He spread his hands imploringly. “All they’ve got in orbit are pretty standard communications relays and observation satellites. The moons are both out of range of beam projectors. So what else is there?”
“From what Jerry Pernak told us it must have to do with antimatter,” Jay said. “The Chironians are into a whole new world of particle theory. That means they can produce lots of antimatter economically. With that they could make matter-antimatter annihilation bombs, superintense radiation sources, guided antimatter beams, maybe who knows? But it has to be something like that.”
The mention of antimatter reminded Colman of something. He sat back on the sofa and cast his mind back as he tried to pinpoint what. It reminded him of something Kath had said. The others stopped talking and looked at him curiously. And then it came to him. He cocked his head to one side and looked at Bernard. “Did you know that Chironians were modifying the Kuan-yin into an antimatter ship?” he asked.
Bernard sat forward, his expression suddenly serious. “No, I didn’t,” he said. “Is that what they’ve been doing to it? How did...” His voice trailed away silently.
Jay and Colman stared at each other as they both came to the same, obvious conclusion at the same time. “That’s it,” Jay murmured.
Bernard’s expression was grave and distant. “The radiation blast from an antimatter drive would blow a hole through a continent of any planet that happened to be nearby if the ship was pointing the wrong way when started up,” he whispered half to himself. “It’s been up there in orbit, right under our noses all the time. They’ve got the biggest radiation projector anybody ever dreamed of—right there, riding out in space with the Mayflower II. They put kids and comic robots on it, and we never even noticed it.”
A long silence went by while they took it all in. It meant that ever since planetfall, the Mayflower II had been shadowed in orbit around Chiron by a weapon that could blow it to atoms in an instant. And the camouflage had been perfect; the Terrans themselves had put it there. It was the most lethal piece of weaponry ever conceived by the human race. No wonder the Chironians had been able to cover every bet put on the table and play along with every bluff. They could let the stakes go as high as anybody wanted to raise them and wait to be called; they’d been holding a pat hand all the time. Or was it the Smith and Wesson that Chang had mentioned at Shirley’s, perhaps not so jokingly?
“We might not be the only ones who’ve noticed there’s an extra hole on Remus,” Jay said at last. “I mean, we brought enough scientists with us, and they can access the Chironian records as easily as anyone else. The Chironians aren’t exactly secretive about their physics.”
“They could have,” Bernard agreed. “But have they? It doesn’t add up to the way Sterm’s acting.”
Jay shrugged. “Maybe he figures he’s got a better than even chance of outshooting them. Maybe he’s just crazy.”
Lechat had digested the implications by now and appeared worried. “Maybe the Chironians have given a warning, but nobody realized it. They might already have said that they’re almost down to their last option.”
“How do you mean?” Colman asked.
Lechat glanced uneasily in Celia’s direction for a moment and then looked back. “Howard Kalens,” he said in a lower voice. “Couldn’t that have been a final warning? Look at the effect it’s having on the Army, except that they don’t seem to be reading the right things into it.” He looked at Jay. “I can’t see that they’ve got it all figured out. They can’t have.”
Bernard sat back and drew a long breath. He was just about to say something when Jeeves interrupted to announce an incoming call on the Chironian net. It was Kath, calling from her place in Franklin. “I’ve heard from Casey,” she said when Bernard accepted. “He’s collected his package with Adam, and they’re on their way home with it. I just thought you’d like to know.”
Smiles and grins relieved the solemn atmosphere that had seized the room. From the direction of the table, Jean emitted an audible sigh of relief. Bernard grinned up at the screen. “Thanks.” he said. “We’re all glad to hear it. Talk to you again soon.” Kath gave a quick smile and vanished from the screen.
“Veronica made it!” Jean exclaimed delightedly. “Steve, I don’t know how you handled it all.”
“It pays to have friends,” Colman grunted.
“Congratulations, Steve,” Bernard said, still smiling. “I wonder what those guards are doing right now.”
“I’m very pleased,” Lechat murmured. Jay grinned, and Marie smiled at what was evidently good news.
Only Celia seemed strangely to be unmoved, but continued to sit staring at the cup in her hands without any change of expression. Her unexpected reaction caused the others to fall quiet and stare at her uncertainly. Then Jean said in a hesitant voice, “You don’t seem very excited, Celia. Is there something wrong?”
Celia didn’t seem to hear. Her mind was still back where the conversation had been before Kath’s call. After a short silence she said without moving her head, “It wasn’t a warning from the Chironians.”
The others exchanged puzzled looks. Jean shook her head and looked back at Celia. “I’m sorry, we’re not with you. Why—“
“The Chironians didn’t kill Howard,” Celia said. “I did.” A silence descended like steel doors slamming down around the room. Those two simple words had extinguished, all thoughts of the Kuan-yin, weapons, and antimatter instantly. Every head turned disbelievingly to Celia as she sat staring ahead. Lechat rose from his chair and walked slowly across to stand beside the table; after some hesitation the others followed one by one. Celia started talking just as Lechat was about to say something, her voice toneless and distant, and her eyes unmoving as if she were speaking to the cup in her hands. “I couldn’t have spent my life with a man who had closed his mind to reality. You can’t know what it was like. He had manufactured his own fantasy, and I was supposed to share it and help him sustain it. It was impossible.” She paused to gulp some of the coffee. “So, the thing with Sterm happened and Howard learned about it.” Celia closed her eyes as if she were trying to shut out a memory that she was seeing again. “He lost control of himself completely there was a fight, and...” She left the rest unsaid. After a few seconds she opened her eyes and stared blankly ahead again. “Maybe I wanted him to find out—provoked him to it. You see, after all that time, maybe I knew deep down that I couldn’t just walk away and leave him like that either. “What other way was there?” Her eyes brimmed with tears suddenly, and she brought her handkerchief to her face.
Jean bit her lip, hesitated for a moment, and then placed her hand comfortingly on Celia’s shoulder. “You mustn’t think like that,” she urged. “You’re trying to take all the guilt upon yourself and—“
Celia raised her head suddenly to look up at Lechat. “But I only shot him twice, not six times as the soldiers found. And the house hadn’t been broken into when I left. Don’t you see what that means?”
Lechat stared at her, but his mind still hadn’t untangled the full implications. Beside him Colman’s jaw clamped tight. “Somebody faked it to look like the Chironians did it,” Colman grated.
Bernard’s jaw dropped. “Sterm?” he gasped, then looked down at Celia. “You did tell him?”
Celia nodded. “That evening, as soon as I got up to the ship. I think I must have been hysterical or something. But yes, I told him.”
Lechat was nodding slowly to himself. “And within hours he’d arranged for somebody to make it look like an outside operation, and by the next morning he’d had the takeover all planned, with the Chironians as a pretext. Everything fits. But who would have done it?”
“SDs,” Colman said at once. “It was a professional job.”
“Would they accept a job like that?” Jean asked, sounding dubious,
Colman nodded. “Sure. They’re selected and trained to obey orders and not ask questions. Some of them would shoot their own mothers if the right person said so. And Stormbel was in on it. It fits.” He thought for a second longer, and then looked at Lechat and Bernard. “There were a lot of suspicious things about Padawski breaking out too. It couldn’t have happened the way it did without inside help. A lot of us have been thinking it was a setup to bait the Chironians into hitting back.”
Lechat’s brows lifted and then creased into an even deeper frown. “And then there were those bombings...” He looked down at Celia. “Was Stern behind those things as well?”
“I wouldn’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me,” Celia answered. “I just know the true story about Howard because...because...”
“Does anyone else know about Howard?” Colman asked. “Veronica, for instance?”
Celia shook her head. “Nobody until now.”
Colman exhaled a long breath. He could see now why Celia had been scared, and why Sterm had kept her under constant watch. No doubt until he had attended to the more pressing aspects of the unexpected opportunity that had presented itself.
“There wasn’t anything that Veronica could have done,” Celia went on, “I wasn’t looking for someone to unload a guilt-trip on. What I had to say was a lot bigger than that. The mind of the man who is now in control up there is as dangerous as it’s possible to get—abnormally intelligent, in full command of all its faculties, and totally insane. Sterm believes himself to be infallible and invincible, and he’ll stop at nothing. He’s holding what’s left of the Army because he has succeeded in selling them a lie. And I was the only person who could expose that lie. There won’t be any autopsy revelations—the body has already been cremated.” Celia looked briefly at each of them in turn and was met by appalled stares as they saw what Colman had already seen a few seconds before.
“Yes, I knew I was in danger, but that was secondary,” Celia told them. “I still can expose the lie. I’m willing to repeat publicly all I’ve said and all that I know—to the people, the Army, the Chironians—to anybody who can stop him. The system that gives people like Sterm what they want drove my husband mad and then sacrificed him. There must he no more sacrifices. That was why I had to get away.”