Mikal Blount lifted the helmet of his environment suit and let it drop to the end of its tether. He then ran a hand across his bald pate, rubbing vigorously to restore scalp circulation. It was an automatic gesture of which he was completely unaware. All of his attention was focused instead on the angry, red-faced man with the quivering mustache. Renauld Garcia, nominal head of the Alliance expedition to Earth, had doffed his helmet a few seconds earlier. His face showed the contortions of long hours of rage.

"What sort of a butcher shop are you running, Blount?" Garcia screamed at him. "You killed unarmed men down there."

"They were our enemies, Dr. Garcia," Blount replied coldly. "Would you have set them free to take what they knew back to Titan?"

"No, but damn it, I wouldn't murder them either."

"What would you have had me do? Take them prisoner so they could eat our supplies until we all starved? Perhaps we could have sworn them to secrecy."

"I notice that you spared the women," Garcia said with scathing sarcasm. "Scruples, or merely looking for a playmate?"

Blount's eyes drilled a hole through the archaeologist. "My reasons are my own. They do not concern you."

Garcia opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, turned, and kicked off down the long axis corridor. Blount watched him until he reached the far bulkhead, bounced expertly around a corner and sailed from view.

Outbound from Saturn, Blount had pegged Garcia for a fool. The scientist had reinforced that impression almost daily. He had had a habit of carrying onad nauseam about his pet theories and the sad state of modern archaeology. Now, however, Blount wondered if he had misjudged the tall scientist.

His first doubts had come when Garcia insisted on accompanying the raiding party to the surface. Blount had tried to dissuade him, explaining that they were after a criminal known to be with the Titanian expedition. Uncharacteristically, Garcia had persisted. Blount found it strange, but had not really begun to wonder about the scientist's real motivation until later.

Gregory Herrera, Blount's aide, had selected one of the senior prisoners for detailed interrogation. It had taken only a matter of minutes for the man to describe the theory of energy screens, how they could be used as an impenetrable defense, and where the records on these devices might be found. The prisoner's answer to the next question had caused Herrera to send for Blount.

"Tell the admiral what you told me."

The prisoner glared at them from out of two blackened eyes. When he finally spoke, his voice was slurred by bruised and bleeding lips. "You asked how we first became aware of this laboratory. I told you that the information came originally from the Northern Alliance."

"From us?" Blount asked. "Whoin the Alliance?"

"I don't know the details. You will have to ask Miss Crawford or Miss Trevanon about it. They were directly involved."Herrera had worked the prisoner over for nearly half an hour longer without learning anything new. Then, when the captive's abused body finally surrendered its hold on consciousness, Blount had given orders that he be put out of his misery.

"Shall we bring in the women?" Herrera asked after administering the coup de grace.

"No," Blount replied. "We'll take them to the ship with us. Both are undoubtedly aware of my role in the raid on Cloudcroft. We dare not risk what they might blurt out under standard interrogation."

"I trust my men implicitly," Herrera said.

"I don't," Blount had countered. "The fewer people who know this secret, the better. Now, get them ready for transport and make sure they talk to no one."

"Yes, sir."

For the rest of the hours they had spent aground, Blount grilled the remaining prisoners relentlessly about everything they knew concerning energy screens. Repeatedly he had been told that the original information had come from the Alliance. Finally, with the sun about to rise and their launch window closing, he had ordered the captured information transferred to the landing boat. One group of Marines had liquidated the remaining prisoners and piled their bodies in the large hemispherical cavern where all of the experimental equipment was located. A second group had set demolition charges. The charges exploded just as the raiding party sealed themselves inside their ship and prepared for a return to orbit.

Blount spent the hours following launch deep in thought. The implications of what the prisoners had told him were frightening. If true, then someone had discovered a way to make the Alliance invincible, yet withheld that knowledge from the ruling council. It was then that he had begun to suspect Renauld Garcia of being more than he appeared. After all, the Cloudcroft Museum archaeological expedition had been planned long before the Navy involved itself. Garcia, Blount remembered, was one of Kelt Dalishaar's people. That fact spoke volumes concerning the identity of the ultimate culprit in this affair.

Blount was still angry with Garcia when the landing boat rendezvoused with its mother ship. It had been all he could do to hold his tongue while the archaeologist screamed at him. After Garcia stormed off, Blount hurriedly doffed the remainder of his armor, and then pulled himself hand over hand to his small shipboard office. Once settled behind his desk, he buzzed Herrera aboard the landing boat.

"Yes, sir?"

"Are your prisoners still gagged?"

"Yes, sir. They have spoken to no one."

"Very well. Bring them to my office. Make sure that you don't let them out of your sight."

"We're on our way."

Herrera towed Kimber Crawford and Halley Trevanon into the admiral's cabin and strapped them to a bulkhead. Their hands were still tied behind them and their mouths covered with a tape used to seal air leaks. Both women showed a tinge of the wild-eyed desperation with which the body greets incipient suffocation.

"Remove their gags, Gregori," Blount said. "Can't you see they are having trouble breathing?"Each woman flinched as Herrera pulled the adhesive strips away, and then gasped hungrily for air. Blount let them breathe and calm down a bit.

"Do you know who I am?" he asked in a conversational tone a minute later. Neither woman answered, but their eyes told him all he needed to know. "I thought so. Then you know that I have every reason to kill you. Therefore, I suggest that you cooperate and give me a reason to keep you alive. Shall we discuss the whereabouts of our mutual friend, Larson Sands?"

"We don't know where he is," Halley said, her gaze defiant now that she had regained her breath.

"I think you do. Several of the other captives told us he was with your group until only a few hours before our arrival. Where did he go?"

"Where you'll never find him!" Kimber shouted.

"Keep your voice down!" Blount said. "I want this kept between us. Now then, did Sands return to your ship? Answer me, or by God, I'll have Herrera dump one of you out the airlock!"

Both women hesitated, and then Kimber said, "He was called back to the ship. I don't know the reason."

"Then he must still be there!" Blount said in triumph.

"I don't think so. We were talking when your gorillas broke into the laboratory. He probably headed back down five minutes after our communications failed."

Herrera said, "That may have been the reentry trail the ship reported seeing."

"Too bad we were on such a tight schedule," Blount mused. "If we'd waited, Captain Sands might have saved us the trouble of searching him out."

"You're lucky he didn't," Halley snapped. "He would have killed you!"

"I doubt that. Still, the man does lead a charmed existence. Consider my current dilemma. Normally, we would move against your ship and destroy it to ensure Sands's death. However, not knowing whether he is aboard, I would be risking my own ship in an action that might prove worse than useless. Then there is the energy screen data we carry. That information makes even the smallest risk unacceptable. So you see, events have conspired to force me to take my prize and go home."

"What about us?" Kimber asked.

"You ladies present me with a different sort of dilemma. You know about my part in the raid and, given the opportunity, would pass that knowledge on to any number of the uninitiated aboard this ship. You will have to be silenced. Killing you would solve the problem, but would aggravate other factors of the same problem."

"What 'other factors'?"

"Why, Captain Sands, of course. With you dead, I will cease to have a hold over him. Furthermore, he will become reckless and will probably broadcast my identity to anyone who will listen. We must keep you alive to give him an incentive to remain silent. Then, Miss Crawford, there is your father and his various functionaries. They, too, must be given the same incentive. The dilemma is how to keep you from infecting this ship with your information without killing you? Gregori!""Yes, sir."

"Tell the captain that we have two passengers for cold sleep. We will keep our prisoners out of mischief, yet available should we find it necessary to prove they are still alive."

"Yes, sir."

Blount turned back to Kimber and Halley. "I hope you have pleasant dreams, ladies. With a little luck, Captain Sands will be there to greet you when you wake in a few months."

None of the four men aboard the landing boat said anything as they left Earth for the last time. Three of them were lost deep in their own angry thoughts, while the fourth slipped fitfully into and out of unconsciousness. Larson Sands, seated once again next to the pilot, was the angriest of all.

After he and Jim McCarver had gotten Paulo Renzi into an environment suit, they had called Forbes down from the hills. The landing boat had set down in front of the main laboratory entrance. The three of them had taken a holocamera from the boat and filmed the whole grisly scene. Then they had undertaken the grim task of laying out the dead. They had arranged the bodies in one of the laboratory's office spaces, sealed the door, and scrawled a marker with their names. As they worked, Sands could not quench the white fire of rage that threatened to consume him.

Each time his body's natural defense against strong emotion calmed him, Sands thought of Kimber and wondered at her fate. That would be sufficient catalyst to begin the cycle once more. He was physically sickened by the surge of adrenaline that coursed through his veins, with every attack worse than the one before it. He knew that he had to get himself under control if he were to save Kimber and Halley -- if indeed, theycould be saved.

"Coming up on rendezvous," Forbes said beside him. The words intruded on Sands's destructive reverie.

With a conscious effort, he drew himself back to reality. For the first time in hours, the taste of bile in his mouth was not quite so strong.

"How is Professor Renzi?"

"The same," came McCarver's answer from the rear seat. "He's nodded off again."

"Keep an eye on him."

"Mr. Sands?" McCarver asked.

"Yes?"

"Do you think he knew what he was saying back there about being able to shield the Earth from the sun?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"I've been thinking about it. What if it were possible? Could you put things back the way they were?"

"It would be difficult," Sands replied. Prodded by McCarver's question, the analytical part of his mind began chewing on the problem. To his surprise, the activity soothed him. It was good to think about something other than Bolin, even for a minute.

"What about all of the dead animals and plants?""That would be a problem, of course. But every cloud city has its life banks, zoos, arboreta, and dioramas. Our ancestors made a concerted effort to save as many species as possible, if only in the form of genetic material. Once the planet cooled off enough for liquid water to form, you could probably reseed it with life."

"Sounds like it would take a long time."

"A century at least, I should think. Still, that is not very long on the grand scheme of things. Our great grandchildren could live there if they wanted to."

"Don't you think they would go home to Earth?"

"Would you?"

"Of course!" Forbes answered. "Wouldn't you?"

Sands shrugged inside his suit. "I don't know. I like living among the clouds."

None of them spoke for long minutes until Forbes called the ship for instructions. "Hello,Vixen , ready for final approach."

Ten minutes later, there was the satisfyingthump! of docking latches as the landing boat returned to its mother. They waited for air pressure to be built up around their canopy before opening it. Even though they were in zero gravity, it took the efforts of all three of them to maneuver Professor Renzi's limp body out of its seat. They handed Renzi up toVixen 's chief engineer, who manhandled him through the docking port and into the ship. The three of them followed single file. They were met by Captain McCarver just inside the open airlock.

"Mr. Sands," McCarver said as soon as Lars had his helmet off. The captain seemed uncharacteristically excited.

"What is it?"

"We received a communication from the Alliance ship."

"When?" Sands asked.

"Ten minutes ago."

"What did they want?"

"They sent you a message. I've got it all set up for playback in my cabin."

"Let's go!"

The screen in the captain's cabin flashed alight at the touch of a button. It cleared to show Micah Bolin's grinning features staring out at Lars. For a moment, he thought those eyes were looking right at him. He shook off the feeling. After all, this was a recording. Bolin began to speak immediately: "To Privateer Captain Larson Sands aboard the Titanian freighterVixen . This is Admiral Mikal Blount of the Northern Alliance Navy. Today my forces captured Kimber Crawford and Halley Trevanon, both wanted for complicity in crimes that you perpetrated against the Alliance. It is our intent to return them to Cloudcroft to stand trial. We will be lenient if you surrender yourself to us on Saturn. If you do not, they alone will pay for your crimes. Think carefully before you do anything hasty. Blount out!"Sands stared at the screen for long minutes without speaking. He was interrupted by a call from Forbes onVixen 's bridge.

"What is it Mr. Forbes?" the captain asked.

"The computer has just spotted a drive flare, Captain. It appears that a vessel is leaving Earth orbit."

"I'll be up momentarily, Mr. Forbes," the captain replied. He turned to Sands. "What would you have me do?"

Sands looked up. To his own surprise, all of the rage of the past few hours was gone. In its place was the cold calculation of a heartless machine. "Prepare the ship for space, Captain. We are following them home."

Chapter 28: Council of War.

Kelt Dalishaar stood on the balcony of his residence and gazed into the blue-white haze that surrounded the city. Cloudcroft was back in the center of the North Temperate Belt, with the cloud walls of the flyway invisible in the far distance. The narrows associated with Dardenelles Cyclone were either six months astern or eight months ahead, depending on one's outlook.

It had been a bad six months for the First Councilor of the Northern Alliance. Ever since that terrible night of the raid, his careful plans had gone seriously awry. Nor had his streak of bad luck yet run itself out, not if the latest report from their agent on Titan was correct.

"Admiral Samorset is here," his newest mistress announced from the wide doorway behind him. Felice could not yet anticipate his every mood as Jasmine had done, but she also was not on the payroll of any other council faction ... at least, not so far as he knew. That one advantage made up for a great deal.

Besides, she would learn.

"I'll be in presently." He took one last glance at the city he ruled as he composed his thoughts. This interview with Samorset was likely to be a difficult one. It had been a week since Renauld Garcia's expedition had departed Earth unexpectedly. That fact, as much as any other, seemed to confirm the rumblings he was receiving from Titan.

The Grand Admiral stood stiffly as Dalishaar entered the study.