* * * I saw Chloe any number of times during training. I even spoke to her several times. But only once did I speak to her alone.

It was shortly before I was due to depart from Section One. By that time, I was a regular in the belowground canteen. Dan Buckley had long since departed, and more often than not I ate alone. But one day I noticed Chloe seated at a corner table, likewise eating alone, as she often did. Most of my fellow new arrivals felt inhibited in her presence, for her connection with the Project made her almost the equivalent of hereditary aristocracy. Combined with her slight air of aloofness, it discouraged familiarity.

Generally, I was no more immune to the feeling than everyone else. Today, though, something made me take my tray over to her table.

"May I join you, Miss Bryant?"

She looked up and smiled. She had a nice smile, but it never altogether lost that faint undertone of seriousness. "Of course. Glad for the company. Mr. Devaney, isn't it?"

"Bob."

"I'm Chloe. I've seen you around a lot, but I haven't gotten a chance to talk to you at any length. I hear

you had a run-in with the Tonkuztra." (She would know about that, I reflected.) "I also understand Mr. Inconnu took a personal interest in bringing you into the Project.""So I've been told." Feeling flattered by her interest, I told her the story of my recruitment. "But unlike you," I concluded, "I've never met him."

"I wouldn't say I 'met' him, really. I think I might have said 'h.e.l.lo' to him, but he never spoke to me . . .

just looked at me." She took on a look of puzzled reminiscence.

"Anyway," I resumed, "I just wanted to thank you for making so much clear to me about the Project, over the past months. Although . . . there's one thing I still don't understand.""What's that?""The name. Why is it called the Prometheus Project?""It's a perfect fit. You see, in Greek mythology-""Yes, I know. Prometheus was the renegade t.i.tan who stole the secret of fire from the G.o.ds and gave it to men."

"Right." She looked at me with mildly surprised interest. "So you can see how appropriate the name is.

Mr. Inconnu brought the knowledge that gives humanity a fighting chance to make a place for itself in the galaxy."

"Yeah, to that extent it does seem appropriate. Only . . . you left out the rest of the story. Zeus was afraid

that Prometheus' gift of fire might enable mortals to challenge the G.o.ds someday. So he punished Prometheus by chaining him to a mountain, where a vulture tore at his guts for centuries."

"Yes, I remember that." Chloe made a face. "Delightful people, those Greek G.o.ds."

"Yeah, a laugh a minute. But the point is, Mr. Inconnu isn't being punished . . . at least not so you'd notice. Is he?"

"I see what you mean. And yet . . . I remember Dad telling me once-I must have been about ten at the time-that when the name was proposed, Mr. Inconnu agreed that it was a good fit. According to Dad, he said it with a kind of grim amus.e.m.e.nt."

"Hmm . . . I did get a glimpse of him once, here at this station. He does have a G.o.d-awful scar on his cheek. And in the picture you showed us, it looked like he'd only recently gotten it. He must have gone through a lot getting away to Earth."

"True. But I wonder if the punishment he's undergoing is loneliness. After all, he'll never see his own people again."

"I guess that must be it." But somehow, I felt, there had to be more to it than that.

"Well," Chloe said, getting to her feet and extending her hand, "I've got to be going. I'm finishing up my stint of lecturing here, and getting back into fieldwork. You're about to leave yourself, aren't you?

"Yeah." I took her hand. The handshake lingered a few seconds . . . it seemed she was in no great hurry to terminate it. "I've been a.s.signed to Section Two."

"Really? I'm with Section Five. Maybe you'll get a.s.signed to one of our missions sometime."

"I'd like that."

As she departed the canteen, she looked back over her shoulder at me and smiled. "So would I."

But it was five years before I saw her again.

o

INTERLUDE.

President-Elect Harvey Langston stared wide-eyed. "You mean . . . Men in Black?"

"Actually," said the President with a smile, "the Prometheus Project prefers to avoid that term."

"But," spluttered Langston, "this whole business about posing as the government of Earth . . . ! Why

wasn't the whole thing simply turned over to the United Nations?"

The President gave him a look of disgusted exasperation. "Even in 1946, when it was still possible to hope that the UN might develop into something worthwhile, that was clearly out of the question for

security reasons. Thank G.o.d it was, given the squalid farce the UN has, in fact, turned out to be!

Besides, the Delkasu wouldn't have worn it."

"Wouldn't have worn it?" Langston echoed faintly.

"Get it through your head: we're talking about a civilization as politically sophisticated as it is

technologically advanced. They wouldn't have accepted something like the UN-as it is or even as it was intended to be-as a planetary government fit to be a player in their power politics. As it was, the best we could manage was to be accepted as a very minor player. Under the circ.u.mstances, it's amazing that we were able to bamboozle them into even that."

The words "power politics" brought a perplexed look to Langston's face. "Yes, you mentioned something about that before. I don't understand. Surely an advanced civilization must have left primitive att.i.tudes like nationalism and militarism behind and achieved political unity on a basis of peace and equality and social justice! Otherwise, it could never have survived to reach the stars. A civilization that has unleashed atomic energy has only two alternatives: utopia, or extinction!"

The President studied the ceiling of the Oval Office, with its reproduction of the Presidential seal in low relief. "I've heard that theory."

"It's not just a 'theory'! It's beyond controversy among enlightened, progressive thinkers!""I don't doubt that for a moment." Forestalling an angry retort, the President leaned forward and spoke with a seriousness which held even Langston's attention. "I've been told, in outline, the political history of the Delkasu, who've set the pattern of galactic civilization, including its geopolitics . . . or 'astropolitics,' I suppose you'd have to call it. Only in outline, you realize; their history is every bit as long and richly complex as ours. You'll get the same kind of overview later.

"Briefly, though, their history isn't dissimilar to ours, up to a point. Various civilizations arose on Kasava, the Delkasu planet of origin. One of them played an historical role a.n.a.logous to our own Western civilization; it had a Scientific Revolution and, subsequently, an Industrial Revolution, and therefore came to dominate the planet. Like our Western civilization, it was divided into a number of competing territorial states-not a coincidence, by the way, for in both cases it meant there was no universal state that could stifle innovation to protect the status quo. Those states played the same kind of endemic war-game as Europe did in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, finally graduating to total war.

"But by that time, one of their nations, called Toranva, had established a clear primus inter pares status among the others. From the way it's been described to me, it was as if. . . . Well, imagine that Britain, instead of losing its American colonies, had succeeded in incorporating them into a kind of imperial federation, resulting in a power base that was in a different league from Spain and France and so on. Toranva led a coalition that won the Delkasu's first total war. But that war, like our World War I, resulted in a totalitarian reaction among the losers. So the coalition had to stay together for a 'cold war' that produced-as ours did-forced-draft technological advancement. Toranva led the way in that, acting as the organizer and informational clearinghouse for R&D. Totanva also a.s.sumed the official role of 'protector' of certain particularly threatened states, with no diplomatic euphemisms. War finally broke out, just as the Delkasu were developing atomic energy-in fact, it was the threat of a totalitarian state getting nuclear weapons that brought it on. By the time it was over, the primacy of Toranva had achieved overt recognition in their equivalent of international law.

"So what the Delkasu took to the stars with them was a kind of political consciousness different from any human culture's. It wasn't a one-state civilization like China, with just the central empire and the barbarians. But neither did it have the Western legal fiction of equal sovereignties, a holdover of the Middle Ages when all kings were social equals regardless of how many or how few troops they could put into the field. Instead, there was generally accepted recognition of one . . . super-sovereignty, I suppose you'd call it. Other nations had certain rights which they were ent.i.tled to have respected. But there was no doubt about the hegemony, nor any embarra.s.sment about it.

"As the Delkasu expansion into interstellar s.p.a.ce a.s.sumed explosive proportions, this pattern expanded with them. The hegemony of Toranva on the planet Kasava simply extended, to become a 'super-supersovereignty' among the new nations that were arising among the stars as a result of Delkasu colonization. It worked.

"And then it had the heart burned out of it by a supernova." "Supernova?" Langston blinked. The word had a dimly familiar sound. He'd once taken an astronomy course in college because it had seemed the easiest way to meet the science requirement for graduation-a requirement to which he objected on ideological grounds. He glanced out the windows behind the President's desk. It was a clear late-autumn evening, and the first stars were beginning to come out. "Uh . . . you mean the sun of the Delkasu home system blew up?" "No. Main-sequence stars-the kind of stars that can have habitable planets-don't go that route. But some of the more ma.s.sive stars do. One of those was only about four light-years from Kasava-a little less than the distance between us and Alpha Centauri, the nearest star. It blew, a little over a thousand years ago . . . although it will be thousands of years yet before the light reaches us. The wave front of the blast had almost reached Kasava before they became aware of it, leaving them little time to prepare. Not that they could have done all that much if they had been given time."

"But," wondered Langston, "what harm could it do across such a distance?" "Plenty. Like electromagnetic pulse, for openers. What do you think would happen to our civilization if all the power grids were wrecked, all the telecommunications networks scrubbed, all the computer databases wiped clean? And that would just start the dominoes falling. Even then, Delkasu technology was at least a century ahead of where we are now. So they were even more dependent on electronics than we are, and hence more vulnerable. Primitive subsistence farmers would have come through better.

But even the subsistence farmers wouldn't have been spared the radioactive fallout to follow. Ecological catastrophe followed the collapse of civilization. "They got as much of the population and as many cultural treasures as possible off Kasava in the limited time they had. Afterwards, of course, no s.p.a.cecraft were able to operate in the system-at least not with the technology they had at the time. Kasava had to be left to die. Later, as they improved their shielding techniques and the wave front pa.s.sed on and dissipated, they returned. Subsequently, Kasava has been resettled, and much has been done to help the savages descended from the survivors: reeducation, and repair to genetic damage. But Kasava will never be more than a shadow of its former self, insignificant save in the realm of sentiment.

"So ever since then, the Delkasu have been in what they consider a state of political limbo. The hegemony is gone. Instead, there are a bunch of interstellar successor-states, all of which agree that the hegemony ought to be reestablished . . . but each state thinks it ought to be the one to do the reestablishing. It's been a snake pit for centuries, and it's only getting worse. You see, the Delkasu states are increasingly jostled by non-Delkasu races which have adopted Delkasu technology and become players in the game. Hence, more snakes in the snake pit."

"And," Langston queried, "they consider us one of those 'players'?""Not a significant one," the President told him firmly. "You must be absolutely clear on that. Think some Third World microstate. In reality, of course, we're not even that, on their standards. If they knew the truth, our status would-if we were extremely lucky-be that of a protected hunter-gatherer tribe of the upper Amazon or New Guinea. But the Prometheus Project managed to convince the first Delkasu explorers-who arrived just a few years after Mr. Inconnu's arrival-that Earth had gotten organized in what they considered an appropriate way under an American hegemony, and was just barely advanced enough in a technological sense to have stumbled onto the secret of interstellar travel. By their own lights, this meant we were ent.i.tled to the equivalent of diplomatic recognition, including an agreement to respect our funny insistence that all contacts be handled through the 'treaty port' on the back side of the Moon."

"That's something I still don't understand. How has this 'Farside Base' been kept concealed from our

lunar orbiters? Yes, I know," Langston partially answered his own question, "you've told me about this

invisibility technology. But with interstellar s.p.a.cecraft coming and going from it . . . ?"

"Very fortuitously, the interstellar drive produces few if any by-products which are detectable by means generally available on this planet. And the Project's own Earth-to-Moon craft are, of course, as undetectable as galactic-level technology can make them. But the real answer to your question is that we have, in effect, abandoned the Moon since the 1970s." The President c.o.c.ked his head. "Have you ever wondered why that happened?"

"Well," Langston huffed, "of course we abandoned such an obscene waste of money! With so many problems here on Earth crying our for socially useful spending, how could we possibly afford s.p.a.ce exploration?"

The President gave him a look of sardonic amus.e.m.e.nt. "Yeah. How could we possibly afford the one thing the US government has done in the last half century that's actually shown a profit? It may interest you to know that the line you're parroting is one that the Prometheus Project itself insinuated into the popular consciousness, with the eager but unwitting help of the self-styled intellectual elite. A d.a.m.ned shame. But it had to be done."

"What are you talking about?" Langston's anger waxed along with his bewilderment."Kennedy had to make his famous commitment to reaching the Moon-it was a matter of national prestige, after the Soviet Union had gotten into orbit first. But even as he was doing it, he knew nothing could be allowed to come of it. So the subtle undermining of the whole enterprise began immediately.

Even at the time, some people realized that the Apollo crash program wasn't the right way to go about it.

A more systematic approach-not putting men on the lunar surface quite so soon, but laying a solid foundation for future development-would have made better sense. But that was the whole point: to discredit it, make it look like just a ridiculously expensive stunt." The President gave a sad chuckle.

"Ordering those guys to jump around in low gravity and swing a golf club and otherwise act silly was a master stroke!" The chuckle departed, leaving the sadness. "Yes . . . it was too bad. In fact, it had some unfortunate cultural side effects by seeming to confirm what the twerps of that era were saying about the 'establishment.' But it was necessary."

"Why?""Haven't you been listening to anything?" The President got his irritation under control and spoke levelly. "If we were swarming over the Moon right now-as, rationally, we ought to be-there'd be no way Farside Base's existence could be concealed. The whole secret would be blown, with the consequences I've tried to make clear to you."

"But from what you've been telling me, it's already been 'blown,' as you put it. This, uh, Tonkuztra . . ."

Langston struggled to collect his thoughts. Organized crime, like international great-power rivalries, had no place in his picture of what an advanced society was supposed to be like. "According to you, they'veknown the truth about Earth for almost half a century now! Why bother trying to continue the deception?"

"Because as far as we know, the secret's still good as far as the larger galactic society is concerned," the President explained. "You must understand that the Delkasu word 'Tonkuztra' refers to a criminal . . . subculture, I suppose you'd call it. Not to any centralized organization. It's divided into a mult.i.tude of outfits, originally based on blood ties and to some extent still so based. There's no capo di tutti capi. All these families, as we might as well call them, hate each other almost as much as they do the law enforcement authorities.

"So while it's true that one Tonkuztra family apparently learned that something was not quite right about

Earth, they weren't about to let it become general knowledge. That would have let their rivals in on it!

"Besides, as far as we can figure it, even that one family doesn't have the whole story. It seems that the traitor was feeding them the information in the form of hints . . . one of them at a time.

"So the Project has continued with its work as though the secret is still intact. That a.s.sumption actually holds, as far as the official diplomatic contacts are concerned. But the knowledge that there are, somewhere, ent.i.ties with an inkling of the truth is something that the Project has to live with.