"Surprised, eh?" said Richard jocularly, turning his chair back to the table. "Of course, she won't get the message for about ten minutes. But when she does, we'll be able to say, 'mission accomplished'!"

"What is this?" Commander Lewis echoed Beowulf Denn.

"It was Robert's idea, really," began Richard, "and he ought to be telling the tale, but he is too modest to do so. Robert and I cooked up the plan between us and told no one else. Just in case there was a leak somewhere-and apparently there was!-Robert made a fuss about wanting to offer his freighters to convey the probes to the deployment site. He offered rather expensive freighters for service. Robert felt badly about, well, about making a scene when we met with the President and wanted to make up for it."

Robert glanced down at the table so as not to meet anyone's eyes, but it was evident that the success of his plan was deeply gratifying to him.

"The NME freighters were decoys. The real probes were sent out on SE freighters to different spots along the face of deployment. They were sent out without any fanfare whatever on the normal delivery schedule we follow for all shipments to Mars and the Asteroid Belt. It would never have done, anyway, to send the probes out in a tight bunch as the seven NME freighters; deployment must be simultaneously effected from several sites, and this is the command I just gave Captain Marks-Owens.

"If the pirates took the bait, then they would go back to their base believing that they had stopped us. And if they didn't know about our plans or the decoy, well, no harm done. Deployment would still go on as scheduled. That's about two minutes from now."

The visitors were stunned. "Why, that's terrific!" stammered Commander Lewis. "No one else knew about this? Not even the President?"

"No one," said Richard. "Only Robert and I. And it's a good thing we did it that way, too. Without the decoy, the launch would have gone as planned with everyone knowing about it. As it is, we're safe now."

"Not only that-" contributed John Rwakatare in his deep ba.s.s voice, "we've learned something of immense value. There is a leak somewhere.

Someone informed the pirates of the launch from NME."

"Yes, there's that," said Robert Nolan with a sigh, finally speaking up. "But for now, deployment of the probes will take place successfully. We'll have to check for the leak, and I initiated a careful search as soon as we received news of the attack."

Richard turned back toward the screen. "Computer," he said. "Give me a tie-in to the master control aboard the Tempest." The screen showed a scene in s.p.a.ce.

"There is a delay, of course, but the feed is continuous. Deployment of the probes is taking place about now, but we won't see the results for about ten minutes." Time pa.s.sed.

"Coming up on the time now," announced Richard a little later, breaking into the light conversation that was going on around the table. All heads turned toward the screen.

"This is a map of the expanse of the site of the deployment. This is not the actual scene, of course; it is a computer enhancement, programmed to show us what is actually happening."

From twelve sites at once, scattered about evenly throughout the area, small points began to glow. The points marked the locations of the SE freighters that had carried the real probes. Simultaneously from every point emerged a starburst of lines, each one a fine, golden strand of light.

"Dr. Hoshino's design propels each probe at about one-twentieth the speed of light. Complete deployment should take about an hour and a half."

The men waited nervously. Some browsed Richard's books and others peered through his small telescope at the moonscape. Occasionally two or three would come together for quiet discussion.

On the screen, the golden lines gradually lengthened. From time to time one would burst into a flower of lines like summer fireworks, and then later each of those lines extended and burst again.

When deployment was complete, the entire screen was filled with a complex pattern of golden points, like dawn-illuminated mist hanging in a huge spider's web.

"Success!" said Richard quietly, but his voice trembled with excitement. "Captain Marks-Owens will now initiate the program that will unify the probes into a single system. At the same time, she will enter a program that will allow the system to read the gravitational forces attendant upon every object within its range. The known asteroids and other heavenly bodies and the scheduled flights of s.p.a.cecraft will be filtered out. What will be left will be the positions of unknown craft and any uncharted natural objects." As he spoke, the web began to shimmer in dozens of places, each the site of an object with enough ma.s.s to ripple the gravitational-detecting field of the net.

"Ah! Now the known ships are being filtered out," Richard observed as many of the ripples disappeared. In a moment, he leaped to his feet.

"There it is! There it is!" he shouted. He ran to the screen. "Look!

Here are the pirates' ships that attacked Robert's freighters yesterday!" He pointed to a small ripple in the pattern and scanned the readings at the bottom of the screen. "Yes, eighteen ships. Here are their ma.s.ses provided down here. And over here," his finger swept across the screen to a large ripple in the upper center, "is the asteroid coming our way!

"Computer! Extrapolate the course of this object"-he gave the particulars-"and provide information on its trajectory."

In eight seconds the voice of the computer spoke. "Object is a natural body of approximately 20,625 trillion tons, currently traveling at a rate of approximately 280,000 miles per hour. If present speed and course are maintained, object will fly by the Earth. Closest approach will be attained in 15 days, 8 hours, 3 minutes, 14 seconds at a distance of approximately 10,689 miles."

There was silence in Richard's office for over a minute. Then someone said, "It's going to miss."

18: Collision Course!

EXHAUSTED with relief, the party broke up. The men from s.p.a.ce Command left the Starlight Enterprise plant and returned to their headquarters.

Robert Nolan and Beowulf Denn lifted off from a launching deck not far from Richard's office and set course for the s.p.a.ce station that was the central facility for Nolan Mining Enterprise.

Richard had already given orders that ships from Starlight Enterprise be a.s.signed the immediate task of pursuing and capturing the eighteen pirate ships that had destroyed NME's decoy freighters the day before.

The SE freighters that had actually carried the probes into s.p.a.ce had been joined by SE ships gathered quietly from various sources during the previous week. They had converged during the journey so that many were in place throughout the area of the search, ready to respond to any orders that might come.

Inside many of them were the Firewasp fighters SE produced for use in the Asteroid Belt. The Firewasps were small, tremendously fast and amazingly maneuverable one-man ships that had been concentrated in several SE bases in the Asteroid Belt. They had been named after a menacing insect found in certain hostile swamps on Mars. The tiny craft served mostly as a deterrent, since smugglers and other lawless types avoided any settlement that showed it was ready to defend itself against marauders.

Commander John Lewis was to issue similar orders to s.p.a.ce Command ships in the vicinity of the microwave net. There were enough SE ships close to the course the pirate fleet was taking that Firewasps could be launched to intercept the pirate ships within an hour.

John Rwakatare and Richard Starlight remained alone in Richard's office. They were seated on a sofa, looking out over the vast lunar landscape. An enormous dark gray field stretched out for several miles before breaking up at the far side into jumbled, light gray boulders.

"What do you make of it, Rock?" asked Richard. "Why did Zimbardo tell the entire planet that he was going to pulverize it, and then set his projectile on a fly-by course?"

"I don't think he merely made a mistake," said Rock. "He's shown he can guide asteroids to near-pinpoint accuracy."

"Hmm, yes...but those were much, much smaller and were aimed at much closer targets. You don't think he could have just...aimed and missed?"

"Possible, Rick, but I'm not convinced. Consider this: where did the communications from Zimbardo come from? An asteroid base. The Starmen told us about this hollow asteroid and that it could be 'flown' like a great s.p.a.ceship. We have seen only one large asteroid coming toward Earth. To be blunt, I think Lurton Zimbardo is a liar. The asteroid he aimed at Earth is his own base! His threat to slam it into Earth was intended to cause panic-and it did! He achieved that without actually having to carry out his threat. I think the real threat is what is inside this hollow asteroid."

Richard was listening intently. The relief he had previously felt was evaporating rapidly. He deeply admired and respected John Rwakatare.

Rock had a remarkable and rare combination of a filing-cabinet mind and an ability to dream. He was eminently logical at all times, but could also come up with "leaps beyond logic" in which inspiration confidently answered a challenging situation. Now was one of those times.

Richard remembered when Rock had graduated from Starlight Academy fifteen years earlier. Richard was in his early forties at the time, and recalled the shock that went through the Starlight world when Rock was offered the position of Starman but had turned it down. He was the only person ever to have refused the honor. He had chosen instead to stay close to a young woman whom he loved; they had married and now had four young children. Rock rarely left his family, and Richard had placed him second in command of Starlight Enterprise.

Rock continued. "We already concluded that the ability to sheath s.p.a.cecraft and even asteroids comes from an alien intelligence more advanced than our own race. I think it highly likely that the source-at least the immediate source-of that knowledge is the asteroid Zimbardo has taken over. We don't know what other capabilities this asteroid base has. But we do know that Lurton Zimbardo is bringing it to Earth-very, very close to Earth, and that he will be here in fifteen days."

Richard swallowed hard and looked away. "Oh my, Rock!-I'm sure you're right. In fact, what other possibilities are there?"

"But unless he has defenses or weaponry we haven't seen yet, we have an advantage. A slight advantage."

"What's that?"

"He doesn't know that we know where he is or that we have guessed what he's really doing."

Robert Nolan and Beowulf Denn made the twenty-six minute journey from the Moon to the s.p.a.ce station. Robert had been full of chatter on the way back, but Wulf had responded only with short sentences, and after they had docked they went their separate ways. Robert went to his office to call the President. Richard had urged Robert to be the one to inform him that the probes had deployed successfully, that the microwave net had found the asteroid, and that Earth was not in danger of collision. Robert felt the honor deeply and was eager to announce the good news.

Wulf found his way to his own private sanctum, saying he wanted to take a nap. He set a "do not disturb" code on his communication system. Then he prepared another audiodisk, making a brief report of the luncheon meeting at Starlight Enterprise. He played it through twice, making changes until he felt comfortable with the message. Then he speeded it up so that the complete message lasted 0.027 seconds, encrypted it, inserted the disk into his personal computer, and transmitted it. After the message had been sent, he destroyed the disk and removed all signs on his computer that the action had occurred.

He stared out the window at the third planet, a beautiful blue and white globe, thinking nothing in particular. After a moment he stretched out and tried to take a nap. But he couldn't sleep.