And that made him dangerous to the Russians and the Chinese.

America had fallen prey more to its own softness and confusion than to the machinations of the Soviets.

Then, in the turbulent b.l.o.o.d.y starving years that followed the fall with their purges, uprisings, savage repressions, ma.s.s transportations to Siberia and other areas, importation of other nationalities to create division and bludgeoning propaganda and re-education, only the strong and the intelligent survived.

Scone, Broward, and Nashdoi were of the second generation born after the fall of Canada and the United States. They had been born and had lived because their parents were flexible, hardy, and quick. And because they had inherited and improved these qualities.

The Americans had become a problem to the Russians. And to the Chinese. Those Americans transported to Siberia had, together with other nationalities brought to that area, performed miracles with the harsh climate and soil, had made a garden. But they had become Siberians, not too friendly with the Russians.

China, to the south, looking for an area in which to dump their excess population, had protested at the bringing in of other nationalities. Russia's refusal to permit Chinese entry had been one more added to the long list of grievances felt by China towards her elder brother in the Marx family. And on the North American continent, the American Communists had become another trial to Moscow. Russia, rich with loot from the U.S., had become fat. The lean underfed hungry Americans, using the Party to work within, had alarmed the Russians with their increasing power and influence. Moreover, America had recovered, was again a great industrial empire. Ostensibly under Russian control, the Americans were pushing and pressuring subtly, and not so subtly, to get their own way. Moscow had to resist being Uncle Samified.

To complicate the world picture, thousands of North Americans had taken refuge during the fall of their country in Argentina. And there the energetic and tough-minded Yanks (the soft and foolish died on the way or after reaching Argentina) followed the paths of thousands of Italians and Germans who had fled there long ago. They became rich and powerful; Felipe Howards, El Macho, was part-Argentinean Spanish, part-German, part-American.

Recently, the South African Confederation had formed an alliance with Argentina. And the Axis had warned the Soviets that they must cease all underground activity in Axis countries, cease at once the terrible economic pressures and discriminations against them, and treat them as full partners in the nations of the world.

If this were not done and if a war started, and the Argentineans saw their country was about to be crushed, they would explode cobalt bombs.

The Soviets knew the temper of the proud and arrogant Argentineans. They had seemed to capitulate. There was a conference among the heads of the leading Soviets and Axes. Peaceful coexistence was being talked about.

But, apparently, the Axis had not swallowed this phrase as others had once swallowed it. And they had decided on a desperate move.

Having cheap lithium bombs and photon compressors and the means to deliver them with gravitomagneticdrives, the Axis was as well armed as their foes. Perhaps (their thought must have been) if they delivered the first blow, their anti-missiles could intercept enough Soviet missiles so that the few that did get through would do a minimum of damage. Perhaps. No one really knew what caused the Axis to start the war.

Whatever the decision of the Axis, it had put on a good show. One of its features was the visit by their Moon officers to the base at Eratosthenes, the first presumably, in a series of reciprocal visits and parties to toast the new amiable relations.

Result: a dying Earth and a torn Moon.

Broward belonged to that small underground which neither believed in the old Soviet nor the old capitalist system. It wanted a form of government based on the ancient Athenian method of democracy on the local level and a loose confederation on the world level. All national boundaries would be abolished.

Such considerations, thought Broward, must be put aside for the time being. Getting independence of the Russians, getting rid of the h.e.l.lish bonephones, was the thing to do now. Or so it had seemed to him.

But would not that inevitably lead to war and the destruction of all of humanity? Would it not be better to work with the other Soviets and hope that eventually the Communist ideal could be subverted and the Athenian established? With communities so small, the modified Athenian form of government would be workable. Later, after the Moon colonies increased in size and population, means could be found for working out intercolonial problems.

Or perhaps, thought Broward, watching the monolithic Scone, Scone did not really intend to force the other Soviets to cooperate? Perhaps, he hoped they would fight to the death and the North American base alone would be left to repopulate the world.

"Broward," said Scone, "go sound out Nashdoi. Do it subtly."

"Wise as the serpent, subtle as the dove," said Broward. "Or is it the other way around?"

Scone lifted his eyebrows. "Never heard that before. From what book?"

Broward walked away without answering. It was significant that Scone did not know the source of the quotation. The Old and New Testaments were allowed reading only for select scholars. Broward had read an illegal copy, had put his freedom and life in jeopardy by reading it.

But that was not the point here. The thought that occurred to him was that, nationality and race aside, the people on the Moon were a rather h.o.m.ogeneous group. Three-fourths of them were engineers or scientists of high standing, therefore, had high I.Q.'s. They were descended from ancestors who had proved their toughness and good genes by surviving through the last hundred years. They were all either agnostics or atheists or supposed to be so.

There would not be any religious differences to split them. They were all in superb health, otherwise they would not be here. No diseases among them, not even the common cold. They would all make good breeding stock. Moreover, with recent advances in genetic manipulation, defective genes could be eliminated electrochemically. Such a manipulation had not been possible on Earth with its vast population where babies were being born faster than defective genes could be wiped out. But here where there were so few...

Perhaps, it would be better to allow the Soviet system to exist for now. Later, use subtle means to bend it towards the desired goal.

No! The system was based on too many falsities, among which the greatest was dialectical materialism. As long as the corrupt base existed, the structure would be corrupt.

Broward sat down by Ingrid Nashdoi. She was a short, dark-skinned, small-boned, slightly overweight woman. She had light brown, very large eyes, very long eyelashes, and straight dark brown hair, cut short. Her face was a little too broad; her cheekbones were high. Although not pretty, she Was considered attractive because of her vivacity, intelligence, and wit. Now, she stared at the floor, her face wooden.

Like a wooden Indian, thought Broward. Which was a natural comparison. She was half-Swedish, half-Navaho, a type of mixture not rare in these days. The Russians, during the past fifty years, had removed entire peoples from their native lands and placed them as colonists in barren countries for "redeemist" experiments. One of the areas that had seen a wholesale mixing of such nationalities and races as Swedes, New Zealanders, Turks, Peruvians, Thai, and so forth was the former Navaho-Hopi reservation of Arizona and New Mexico. Once a desert, it was now-rather, had been-a garden of farms that owed its green state to reprocessing of the surfact into soil and a plentiful flow of de-ionized ocean water.

Broward and Nashdoi had grown up in the same neighborhood and attended the same secondary and primary schools.

Then, they had gone their own ways, to opposite ends of Earth. Years later, they had met again, on the Moon. Broward had sharpened his rusty knowledge of Navaho speech by practicing it with her and her husband whenever he got a chance.

"I'm sorry about Jim," he said. "But we don't have time to grieve now. Later, perhaps."

She did not look at him but replied in a low halting voice. "He may have been dead before the war started. I never even got to say goodbye to him. You know what that means. What it probably did mean."

"I don't think they got anything out of him. Otherwise, you and I would have been arrested, too."

He jerked his head towards Scone and said, "He doesn't know you're one of us. I want him to think you're a candidate for the Nationalists. After this struggle with the Russ is over, we may need someone who can report on him.

Think you can do it?"

She nodded her head, and Broward returned to Scone. "She hates the Russians," he said. "You know theytook her husband away. She doesn't know why. But she hates Ivan's guts."

"Good. Ah, here we go."

After the destroyer had berthed at Clavius, and the three entered the base, events went swiftly if not smoothly. Scone talked to the entire personnel over the IP, told them what had happened. Then he went to his office and issued orders to have the a.r.s.enal cleaned out of all portable weapons. These were transferred to the four destroyers the Russians had a.s.signed to Clavius as a token force.

Broward then called in his four Athenians and Scone, his five Nationalists. The situation was explained to them, and they were informed of what was expected of them. Even Broward was startled, but didn't protest.

After the weapons had been placed in the destroyers, Scone ordered the military into his office one at a time.

And, one at a time, they were disarmed and escorted by another door to the a.r.s.enal and locked in. Three of the soldiers asked to join Scone, and he accepted two. Several protested furiously and denounced Scone as a traitor.

Then, Scone had the civilians a.s.sembled in the large auditorium (Technically, all personnel were in the military, but the scientists were only used in that capacity during emergencies.) Here, he told them what he had done, what he planned to do-except for one thing-and asked them if they wished to enlist. Again, he got a violent demonstration from some and sullen silence from others. These were locked up in the a.r.s.enal.

The others were sworn in, except for one man. Whiteside. Broward pointed him out as an agent and informer for both the Russians and Chinese. Scone admitted that he had not known about the triple-dealer, but he took Broward's word and had Whiteside locked up, too.

Then, the radios of the two scout ships were smashed, and the prisoners marched out and jammed into them.

Scone told them they were free to fly to the Russian base. Within a few minutes, the scouts hurtled away from Clavius towards the north.

"But, Colonel," said Broward, "they can't give the identifying code to the Russians. They'll be shot down."

"They are traitors; they prefer the Russky to us. Better for us if they are shot down. They'll not fight for Ivan."

Broward did not have much appet.i.te when he sat down to eat and to listen to Scone's detailing of his plan.

"The Zemlya," he said, "has everything we need to sustain us here. And to clothe the Earth with vegetation and replace her animal life in the distant future when the radiation is low enough for us to return. Her deepfreeze tanks contain seeds and plants of thousands of different species of vegetation. They also hold, in suspended animation, the bodies of cattle, sheep, horses, rabbits, dogs, cats, fowl, birds, useful insects and worms. The original intention was to reanimate these and use them on any Terrestrial-type planet the Zemlya might find.

"Now our bases here are self-sustaining. But, when the time comes to return to Earth, we must have vegetation and animals. Otherwise, what's the use?

"So, whoever holds the Zemlya holds the key to the future. We must be the ones who hold that key. With it, we can bargain; the Russians and the Chinese will have to agree to independence if they want to share in the seeds and livestock."

"What if the Zemlya's commander chooses destruction of his vessel rather than surrender?" said Broward.

"Then, all of humanity will be robbed. We'll have no future."

"I have a plan to get us aboard the Zemlya without violence."

An hour later, the four USAF destroyers accelerated outwards towards Earth. Their radar had picked up the Zemlya; it also had detected five other Unidentified s.p.a.ce Objects. These were the size of their own craft Abruptly, the Zemlya radioed that it was being attacked. Then, silence. No answer to the requests from Eratosthenes for more information.

Scone had no doubt about the attackers' ident.i.ty. "The Axis leaders wouldn't have stayed on Earth to die," he said. They'll be on their way to their big base on Mars. Or, more likely, they have the same idea as us. Capture the Zemlya."

"And if they do?" said Broward.

"We take it from them."

The four vessels continued to accelerate in the great curve which would take them out away from the Zemlya and then would bring them around towards the Moon again. Their path was computed to swing them around so they would come up behind the interstellar ship and overtake it. Though the t.i.tanic globe was capable of eventually achieving far greater speeds than the destroyers, it was proceeding at a comparatively slow velocity. This speed was determined by the orbit around the Moon into which the Zemlya intended to slip.

In ten hours, the USAF complement had curved around and were about 10,000 kilometers from the Zemlya.

Their speed was approximately 20,000 kilometers an hour at this point, but they were decelerating. The Moon was bulking larger; ahead of them, visible by the eye, were two steady gleams. The Zemlya and the only Axis vessel which had not been blown to bits or sliced to fragments. According to the Zemlya, which was again in contact with the Russian base, the Axis ship had been cut in two by a tongue from Zemlya.

But the interstellar ship was now defenseless. It had launched every missile and anti-missile in its a.r.s.enal.

And the fuel for the tongue-generators was exhausted.

"Furthermore," said Shaposhnikov, commander of the Zemlya, "new USO has been picked up on the radar.

Four coming in from Earth. If these are also Axis, then the Zemlya has only two choices. Surrender. Or destroy itself."

"There is nothing we can do," replied Eratosthenes. "But we do not think those USO are Axis. We detected four destroyer-sized objects leaving the vicinity of the USAF base, and we asked them for identification. They did not answer, but we have reason to believe they are North American.""Perhaps they are coming to our rescue," suggested Shaposhnikov.

"They left before anyone knew you were being attacked. Besides, they had no orders from us."

"What do I do?" said Shaposhnikov.

Scone, who had tapped into the tight laser beam, broke it up by sending random pulses into it. The Zemlya discontinued its beam, and Scone then sent them a message through a pulsed tongue which the Russian base could tap into only through a wild chance.

After transmitting the proper code identification, Scone said, "Don't renew contact with Eratosthenes. It is held by the Axis. They're trying to lure you close enough to grab you. We escaped the destruction of our base. Let me aboard where we can confer about our next step. Perhaps, we may have to go to Alpha Centaurus with you."

For several minutes, the Zemlya did not answer. Shaposhnikov must have been unnerved. Undoubtedly, he was in a quandary. In any case, he could not prevent the strangers from approaching. If they were Axis, they had him at their mercy.

Such must have been his reasoning. He replied, "Come ahead."

By then, the USAF dishes had matched their speeds to that of the Zemlya's'. From a distance of only a kilometer, the sphere looked like a small Earth. It even had the continents painted on the surface, though the effect was spoiled by the big Russian letters painted on the Pacific Ocean.

Scone gave a lateral thrust to his vessel, and it nudged gently into the enormous landing-port of the sphere.

Within five minutes, his crew of ten were in the control room.

Scone did not waste any time. He drew his gun; his men followed suit; he told Shaposhnikov what he meant to do. The Russian, a tall thin man of about fifty, seemed numbed. Perhaps, too many catastrophes had happened in too short a time. The death of Earth, the attack by the Axis ships, and, now, totally unexpected, this. The world was coming to an end in too many shapes and too swiftly.

Scone cleared the control room of all Zemlya personnel except the commander. The others were locked up with the forty-odd men and women who were surprised at their posts by the Americans.

Scone ordered Shaposhnikov to set up orders to the navigational computer for a new path. This one would send the Zemlya at maximum acceleration towards a point in the south polar region near Clavius. When the Zemlya reached the proper distance, it would begin a deceleration which would bring it to a halt approximately half a kilometer above the surface at the intended area.

Shaposhnikov, speaking disjointedly like a man coming up out of a nightmare, protested that the Zemlya was not built to stand such a strain. Moreover, if Scone succeeded in his plan to hide the great globe at the bottom of a chasm under an overhang... Well, he could only predict that the lower half of the Zemlya would be crushed under the weight-even with the Moon's weak gravity.

"That won't harm the animal tanks," said Scone. "They're in the upper levels. Do as I say. If you don't, I'll shoot you and set up the computer myself."

"You are mad," said Shaposhnikov. "But I will do my best to get us down safely. If this were ordinary war, if we weren't man's-Earth's-last hope, I would tell you to go ahead, shoot. But..."

Ingrid Nashdoi, standing beside Broward, whispered in a trembling voice, "The Russian is right. He is mad.

It's too great a gamble. If we lose, then everybody loses,"

"Exactly what Scone is betting on," murmured Broward. "He knows the Russians and Chinese know it, too.

Like you, I'm scared. If I could have foreseen what he was going to do, I think I'd have put a bullet in him back at Eratosthenes. But it's too late to back out now. We go along with him no matter what."

The voyage from the Moon and the capture of the Zemlya had taken twelve hours. Now, with the Zemlya's mighty drive applied-and the four destroyers riding in the landing-port -the voyage back took three hours. During this time, the Russian base sent messages. Scone refused to answer. He intended to tell all the Moon his plans but not until the Zemlya was close to the end of its path. When the globe was a thousand kilometers from the surface, and decelerating with the force of 3g's, he and his men returned to the destroyers. All except three, who remained with Shaposhnikov.

The destroyers streaked ahead of the Zemlya towards an entrance to a narrow canyon. This led downwards to a chasm where Scone intended to place the Zemlya beneath a giant overhang.

But, as the four sped towards the opening two crags, their radar picked up four objects coming over close to the mountains to the north. A battlebird and three destroyers. Scone knew that the Russians had another big craft and three more destroyers available. But they probably did not want to send them out, too, and leave the base comparatively defenseless.

He at once radioed the commander of the Lermontdv and told him what was going on.

"We declare independence, a return to Nationalism," he concluded. "And we call on the other bases to do the same."

The commander roared, "Unless you surrender at once, we turn on the bonephones! And you will writhe in pain until you die, you American swine!"

"Do that little thing," said Scone, and he laughed.

He switched on the communication beams linking the four ships and said, "Hang on for a minute or two, men.

Then, it'll be all over. For us and for them."

Two minutes later, the pain began. A stroke of heat like lighting that seemed to sear the brains in their skulls.They screamed, all except Scone, who grew pale and clutched the edge of the control panel. But the dishes were, for the next two minutes, on automatic, unaffected by their pilots' condition.

And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the pain died. They were left shaking and sick, but they knew they would not feel that unbearable agony again.

"Flutter your craft as if it's going out of control," said Scone. "Make it seem we're crashing into the entrance to the canyon."

Scone himself put the lead destroyer through the simulation of a craft with a pain-crazed pilot at the controls.

The others followed his maneuvers, and they slipped into the canyon.

From over the top of the cliff to their left rose a glare that would have been intolerable if the plastic over the portholes had not automatically polarized to dim the brightness.