The subsequent expansion of s.p.a.ce followed directly from the Chironian ma.s.s-energy-s.p.a.ce equivalence relationship: The cooling photon fluid actually transformed into s.p.a.ce as well as matter tweeplets, the ratio depending on the temperature and shifting from one favoring tweeplets to one favoring s.p.a.ce as the universe cooled down. Thus the galactic red-shifts were not caused by expanding s.p.a.ce; the Chironians had turned the whole principle upside down and concluded instead that the expansion of s.p.a.ce was a product of lengthening wavelengths. In other words, radiation defined s.p.a.ce, and as it cooled to longer wavelengths, s.p.a.ce grew. Thus the Chironians had completed the synthesis of tweedledynamics with General Relativity by relating the properties of s.p.a.ce to the photon as well as the properties of time. The "islands" of matter tweeplets left behind from the cooling photon fluid remained dominated internally by the strong force while gravitation became the dominant influence In the macroscopic realm created outside, and in many ways they continued to behave as microcosms of the domain from which they had originated.

Even more remarkable was another prediction that followed from the Chironian symmetry relationships, which required the creation of an "antiuniverse" along with the universe, populated by antimatter and consisting of an extraordinary realm in which "ant.i.time" ran backward and "antis.p.a.ce" contracted from an initial volume of zero, Universes, like particles, were created in pairs. And it was the duality of universes, each exhibiting a s.p.a.cetime decomposed into two discrete dimensions, which gave rise to the two-way duality manifested by tweedles and ant.i.tweedles: Dums, dees, antidums, and antidees were simply s.p.a.celike, timelike, antis.p.a.celike, and ant.i.timelike projections of the same fundamental ent.i.ty existing in the timeless, s.p.a.celess domain of tweedles.p.a.ce.

And, most astonishing of all, it required only one "hypertweedle" in tweedles.p.a.ce to account for all the projections perceived as dums, dees, antidums, and antidees and both universes. A universe provided, in effect, a screen upon which the same projections were repeated over and over again as a consequence of the separation of the s.p.a.ce and time dimensions of the screen itself, which of course was why every dum was the same as every other dum, and every dee the same as every other dee. It was as if a typewriter created paper as it typed on, leaving the planar inhabitants of the flat universe that it had brought into being to ponder why all the characters encountered serially in their own "flat-time" should have exactly the same form.

More tweedles than ant.i.tweedles would be projected into a normal universe, and more ant.i.tweedles than tweedles into an antiuniverse, and that, according to the Chironian version, was why the universe was composed of matter and not antimatter; the opposite, of course, held for the twin antiuniverse. The way to obtain antimatter, they therefore reasoned, would be to make a small part of the universe look like an antiuniverse so that tweedles.p.a.ce could be "fooled" into projecting ant.i.tweedles instead of tweedles into it. In other words, instead of expending enormous amounts of energy to create ant.i.tweedles from scratch, as was thought to be inescapable by most terrestrial scientists, could they "flip" tweedles into ant.i.tweedles in the matter they already had?

To the astonishment of even themselves, they found that they could. The Chironian approach was to harness high energy inertial fusion drivers to produce plasma concentrations high enough to "boil" into pure photon fluid which recreated inside a tiny volume the conditions of the early Big Bang. Within this region, s.p.a.ce and time recoupled and contracted inward with the imploding core to simulate for an instant the bizarre, inverted conditions of an antiuniverse, and in that instant a large portion of the tweedles liberated in the process transformed into ant.i.tweedles which, under the prevailing high-energy conditions, combined preferentially into antiquarks and antileptons rather than radiation. Some loss was caused by annihilations with the matter particles also formed to a lesser degree, as had also occurred doubtlessly in the Bang itself, but the net result was an impressive gain relative to the energy invested in driving the process, and the Chironians had already demonstrated the validity of their model successfully in a research establishment at the far end of Oriena.

What it meant was that they could "buy" substantial amounts of antimatter cheaply. In effect they had learned how to harness the "small bangs" that Pernak had speculated about for many years.

The theory opened up whole new realms, Pernak was beginning to appreciate as he sat back in his office to give his mind a rest from absorbing the information being presented on the wall screen opposite.

What he was starting to glimpse hadn't just to do with the physics; it was the completely new philosophy of existence that came with the physical interpretation.

The Chironian mind had no place for the dismal picture that earlier generations of terrestrial thinkers had painted, that of a universe sp.a.w.ned through a unique accident of Nature, flaring briefly like a spark in the night to dissipate into infinity and be frozen by the spreading, relentless, icy paralysis of entropy. To the Chironian, the universe was but one atom of a possibly infinite Universe of sibling universes, every one of which coexisted at every point in s.p.a.ce with the source-realm that hail procreated its family with the profligacy of a summer storm cloud precipitating raindrops. Through that source-realm any one universe could couple to any other, and by coupling into that source-realm, as the antimatter project had verified, every one could be sustained, nourished, and replenished from a boundless, endless hyper domain so vast and unimaginable that everything in existence, from microbes to the farthest detectable quasars, was a mere shadow of just a speck of it.

Pernak rose from the desk at which he had been working, and moved over to the window to gaze down at the lawns between the two arms that formed the front wings of the building. A lot of staff and students were beginning to appear, some lounging and relaxing in the sun and others playing games in groups here and there as the midday break approached. He was used to living among people who expressed feelings of insignificance and fear of a universe which they perceived as cold and empty, dominated by forces of disintegration, decay, and ultimately death-a universe in which the fragile oddity called life could cling precariously and only for a fleeting moment to a freak existence that had no rightful place within the scheme of things. Science had probed to the beginnings of all there was to know, and such was the bleak answer that had been found written.

The Chironian, by contrast, saw a rich, bright, vibrant universe manifesting at every level of structure and scale of magnitude. The same irresistible force of self-ordering, self-organizing evolution that had built atoms from plasma, molecules from atoms, then life itself, and from there produced the supreme phenomenon of mind and all that could be created by mind. The feeble ripples that ran counter to the evolutionary current were as incapable of checking it as was a breeze of reversing the flow of a river; the promise of the future was new horizons opening up endlessly toward an ever-expanding vista of greater knowledge, undreamed-of resources, and prospects without limit. Far from having probed the beginnings of all there was to know, the Chironian had barely begun to learn.

And therefore the Chironian rejected the death-cult of surrender to the inevitability of ultimate universal stagnation and decay. Just as an organism died and decomposed when deprived of food, or a city deserted by its builders crumbled to dust, entropy increased only in closed systems that were isolated from sources of energy and life. But the Chironian universe was no longer a closed system. Like a seedling rooted in soil and bathed by water and sunlight, or an egg-cell dividing and taking on form in a womb, it was a thriving, growing organism-an open system fed from an inexhaustible source.

And for such a system the universal law was not death, but life.

Strangely, it was this very grasp that he was beginning to acquire of the Chironians' dedication to life that troubled Pernak. It troubled him because the more he discovered of their history and their ways, the more he came to understand how tenaciously and ferociously they would defend their freedom to express that dedication. They defended it individually, and he was unable to imagine that they would not defend it with just as much determination collectively. They had known for well over twenty years that the Mayflower II was coming, and beneath their casual geniality they were anything but a pa.s.sive, submissive race who would trust their future to chance and the better nature of others. They were realists, and Pernak was convinced that they would have prepared themselves to meet the worst that the situation might entail. Although n.o.body had ever mentioned weapons to him, from what he was beginning to see of Chironian sciences, their means of meeting the worst could well be very potent indeed.

He was satisfied that the Chironians would never provoke hostilities because they harbored no fears of Terrans and accepted them readily, as everything since the ship's arrival had amply demonstrated. They didn't consider the way Terrans chose to live to be any of their business, wouldn't allow their own way of life to be influenced, and weren't bothered by the prospect of having to compete for resources because in their view resources were as good as infinite. But he felt less rea.s.sured about the Terrans-at least some of them. Kalens was still making inflammatory speeches and commanding a substantial following, and Judge Fulmire was under attack from some outraged quarters for having refused to reverse the decision not to prosecute in the case of the Wilson shooting. And more recently, Pernak had heard stories from the Chironians about Terrans who sounded like plainclothes military intelligence people circulating in Franklin and asking questions that seemed aimed at identifying Chironians with extreme views, grudges or resentments, and strong personalities-in other words the kind who typified the cla.s.sical recruits for agitators or protest organizers. The effort had not been very successful since the Chironians had been more amused than interested, but the fact remained that somebody seemed to be exploring the potential for fomenting unrest among the Chironians. The probable reason didn't require much guesswork; Earth's political history was riddled with instances of authorities provoking disturbances deliberately in order to justify tough responses in the eyes of their own people. If some faction, and presumably a fairly powerful one, was indeed maneuvering to bring about a confrontation, and if what Pernak was beginning to glimpse of the Chironians was anything to go by, then that faction might well be in for some nasty surprises. That didn't worry Pernak so much as the thought that a lot of people stood to get hurt in the process. Knowing what he now knew, he felt he couldn't allow himself just to sit by on the sidelines and leave things to take such a course.

Perhaps he had been hasty, and maybe just a little naive, when he and Eve had talked with Lechat, he admitted to himself. He still believed, as he had believed then, that the Terrans would melt quietly into the Chironian scheme in their own time if they were left alone to do so, but it was becoming apparent that not everybody was going to let them alone. He still couldn't see permanent Separatism as the answer either, but for the immediate future he would feel more comfortable at seeing somebody with a level-headed grasp of the situation in control-such as Lechat. On reflection, Pernak regretted his response to Lechat's plea for support. But it was far from too late for him to be able to change that. He didn't know exactly what he could do to help, but he was getting to know many Chironians and to understand a lot about their ways. Surely that knowledge could be put to some useful purpose.

Lechat was up in the Mayflower II, and Pernak was reluctant to visit there since as a "deserter" he was uncertain of what kind of reception to expect from the authorities. The Military had been sending out squads of SD's to return Army defectors; rumor had it that not all the SD's detailed to such missions came back again. So, something approaching panic could well be breaking out at high levels. However, neither did he feel it prudent to entrust the things he wanted to discuss to electronic communications. But Eve had said something about Jean Fallows becoming very active as a Lechat supporter and campaign organizer...That would be a good place to begin.

He nodded to himself. That was what he would do. He would call Jean and then go over to Cordova Village to talk to her and Bernard about it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

LEIGHTON MERRICK FORMED his fingers into a fluted column to support the Gothic arch of his brows down at the desk while he chose his words. "Ah, I've been looking over your record, Fallows,"

he looked up. "It shows a consistent attention to detail that is very p.r.o.nounced...everything thorough and complete, and properly doc.u.mented. It's commendable, very commendable...the kind of thing we could do with more of in the Service."

"Thank you, sir." It was obviously a softener. Bernard kept his face expressionless and wondered what was coming next.

Merrick allowed his hands to drop down to his chest. "And how are you settling in? Is your family adjusting well?"

"Very smoothly, considering that it's been twenty years." Bernard permitted a faint smile. "Jean's finding some things a bit strange, but I'm sure she'll get over it."

"Good, very good. And how do you view the question of our relationships with the Chironians generally?"

"I find them a refreshingly honest and direct people. You know where you stand with them." Bernard gave a slight shrug. "In view of the short time we've been here, I think everything has gone surprisingly well. Certainly it could have been a lot worse."

"Hmmm..." The reply didn't seem quite what Merrick hoped for. "Not quite everything, surely," he said.

"What about the shooting of Corporal Wilson a week ago?"

"That was unfortunate," Bernard agreed. "But in my opinion, sir, he asked for it."

"That may be, but it's beside the point that I was trying to make," Merrick said. "Surely you're not condoning the rule by mobocracy that subst.i.tutes for law among these people. Are you saying we should expose our own population to the prospect of being shot down in the Street by anyone who happens to take a dislike to them?"

Bernard sighed. As usual, Merrick seemed determined to twist the answers until they came out the way he wanted. "Of course not," Bernard replied. "But I think people are exaggerating the situation. That incident was not representative of what we should expect. The Chironians act as they're treated. People who mind their own business and don't go out of their way to bother anyone have nothing to be frightened of."

"So everyone becomes a law unto himself," Merrick concluded, "No, the law is there, implicitly, and it applies to everyone, but you have to learn how to read it,"

Bernard frowned. That hadn't come out the way he had intended. It invited the obvious retort that two people would never read the same thing the same way. The difference was that the Chironians could make it work. "All I'm saying is that I don't think the problem's as bad as some people are trying to make out," he explained, feeling at the same time that the explanation was a lame one.

"I suppose you've heard the latest news of those soldiers who escaped from the barracks at Canaveral,"

Merrick said.

"Yes, but that situation can't last. If the Army doesn't get them soon, the Chironians will."

Padawski and his followers had somehow shown up on the far side of the Medichironian, which was only spa.r.s.ely settled, and seemed to he settling in as bandits in the hills. What a bandit would hope to achieve on a world like Chiron was hard to see, but revenge against Chironians seemed to have a lot to do with it; two isolated homes had been invaded, ransacked, and looted, in the course of which five Chironians and one soldier had been killed, Three Chironians, including a fifteen-year-old girl, had been raped. The Army was scouring the area from the air and with search parties on foot, but so far without success-the renegades were well trained in the arts of concealment. Satellites were of limited use if they didn't know exactly where to look, especially where rough terrain was involved.

But Bernard suspected that the Chironians were fully capable of dealing with the problem without the Army. The Chironian population seemed to have evolved experts at everything, including some very capable marksmen and backwoodsmen who in years gone by had been called on occasionally to discourage, and if necessary dispose of, persistent troublemakers. Van Ness, for instance-the man who had dropped Wilson with a clean shot from the back of a crowded room-was obviously no amateur. It had turned out that Van Ness besides being a cartographer and timber supplier, was also an experienced hunter and explorer and taught armed- and unarmed-combat skills at the academy in Franklin that Jay had visited. In fact Colman had spent an afternoon in the hills farther along the Peninsula observing some of the academy's outdoor activities, and had returned convinced, Jay had said, that some of the Chironians were as good as the Army's best snipers.

But Merrick didn't seem inclined to pursue that side of the matter. "Nevertheless Chironians are getting killed," he said. "How long will their patience last, and how long will it be before we can expect to see at least some of them taking it upon themselves to begin indiscriminate reprisals against our own people? -- After all, it would be consistent with their dog-eat-dog att.i.tude, which you seem to approve of so much, wouldn't it."

"I never said anything of the kind. The whole point is that they are not indiscriminate. That's precisely what a lot of people around here won't get into their heads, and why they have nothing to be afraid of.

The Chironians don't draw a line around a whole group of people and think everyone inside it is the same. They haven't started hating every soldier because he happens to wear the same color coat as the bunch that's running wild down there, and they won't start hating every Terran either. They don't think that way."

Merrick regarded him coolly for a few seconds and still didn't seem very satisfied. "Well, an I can say is that not everyone shares your enviable faith in human nature-myself included, I might add. The official policy conveyed to me from the Directorate, which it is your duty as well as mine to support irrespective of our own personal views, "Is that the possibility of violent reaction from the Chironians cannot be dismissed. Therefore we must allow for such an eventuality in considering the future."

Bernard spread his hands resignedly. "Very well, I can seethe sense in being prepared. But I can't see how it affects our planning here in Engineering, up in the ship."

Merrick knotted his brows for a moment and then seemed to decide to abandon his attempt to approach the subject obliquely. "Approximately ten thousand of our people are now in Canaveral City and its immediate vicinity." Merrick looked straight at Bernard. "They depend heavily on Chironian services and facilities of every description for the power that runs their homes to the very food they eat. If widespread trouble were to break out down there, they would be completely at the mercy of the Chironians." He raised a hand to stifle any objection before Bernard could speak. "Clearly we cannot tolerate such a state of affairs. It has been decided therefore that, purely as a precautionary measure to protect our own people if the need should arise, we must be able to guarantee the continuity of essential services if circ.u.mstances should demand. Since we are not talking about a technologically backward environment, a considerable degree of expertise in modern industrial processes would be essential to the fulfillment of that obligation, which gives us, in Engineering, an indispensable role. I trust you see my point."

Bernard's eyes narrowed a fraction. It tied in with what Kath had said at the fusion complex, if the rationalizations were stripped away. So what was Merrick doing-increasing the intended overseeing force because the Directorate bad decided to go ahead with the plan, using Padawski as an excuse? "I'm not sure that I do," he replied. "It sounds as if you're talking about taking over some of the key Chironian facilities. Wouldn't that only make any trouble worse?"

"I made no mention of taking over anything. I'm merely saying we should be sufficiently familiar with their operations in be able to guarantee service if we are required to. Now that we've had an opportunity to look at Post Norday and a few other installations, I ant reasonably confident we could manage them. I didn't want to take up too much of everybody's time before, but since the whole thing now seems feasible I'd like you to have a look at what's at Norday. You should take Hoskins with you. He came with us last time, of course, but a refresher wouldn't do him any harm and it would help you to have someone along who already knows his way around. That was really what I wanted to talk to you about."

Merrick was speaking casually in a way that seemed to a.s.sume the subject to be common knowledge although Bernard still hadn't been told anything else about it officially; but at the same lime he was eyeing Bernard curiously, as if unable to suppress completely an antic.i.p.ation of an objection that he knew would come.

Bernard decided to play along to see what happened. "I'm sorry-how do you mean, last time? I must be missing something."

Merrick's eyebrows shot up in an expression of surprise that was just a little too hasty. "The last time we went to see the complex at Port Norday." Bernard stared blankly at him. Merrick seemed pained.

"Don't tell me you didn't know. I went there with Walters and Hoskins a while ago. Didn't Walters tell you about it?"

"n.o.body told me anything."

Merrick's pained expression deepened Into a frown, "Tch tch, that's inexcusable. How unfortunate. Let me see now-I can't remember exactly when it was but you were on duty. That was why I couldn't include you at the time." That was an outright lie; Bernard had been there on his day off, with Jay. "But anyway, we can soon put that straight. You'll find the place fascinating. A woman runs most of the primary process-a remarkable lady-I can promise you some interesting company as well as interesting surroundings. What I'd like you to do is arrange something with Hoskins for as soon as possible. I'm afraid I'll be tied up for the next couple of days."

Obviously something unusual was going on. Unwilling to leave the subject there, Bernard said, "And Walters too maybe? Perhaps he could use a refresher too,"

Merrick drew a long breath, and his expression became grave. "Mmm Walters. That brings me to the other thing I have to tell you," he said in a heavy voice. "Officer Walters is no longer with us. He and his family disappeared from Cordova Village two days ago and have not been heard of since. He failed to report for duty yesterday. We must a.s.sume that he has absconded. He shook his head sadly.

"Disappointing, Fallows, most disappointing. I credited him with more character."

So that was it! Merrick's blue-eyed boy had let him down, and he needed a replacement. Merrick didn't give a d.a.m.n about Bernard's qualities as an engineer; he was interested only in extricating himself from what was no doubt an embarra.s.sing predicament, As Bernard thought back over the deviousness that he had listened to since he sat down, his memory of Kath's frankness and openness, even to a stranger, came back like a breath of fresh air. "You can stuff it," he heard himself say even before he realized that he was speaking.

"What?" Merrick sat up rigidly in his chair, "What did you say, Fallows?"

"I said you can stuff it." Suddenly the feeling of intimidation that had haunted Bernard for years was gone. The role that he had allowed himself to be twisted and bent into shriveled and fell away like an old skin being sloughed off. For the first time he was himself, and free to a.s.sert himself as an individual. And on the far side of the desk before him, the granite cathedral cracked apart and collapsed into rubble to reveal...nothing inside. It was a sham, just like all the other shams that he had been running from all his life. He had just stopped running.

Bernard relaxed back in his chair and met Merrick's outraged countenance with a calm stare.

"n.o.body's going to shut that complex down, and you know it," he said. "Save the propaganda. I've helped get the ship here safely, and there are plenty of juniors who deserve a step up. I've done my job.

I'm quitting."

"But you can't!" Merrick sputtered.

"I just did."

"You have a contractual agreement."

"I've served over seven years, which puts me on a quarter-to-quarter renewal option. Therefore I owe you a maximum of three months. Okay, I'm giving it. But I also have more than three months of acc.u.mulated leave from the voyage, which I'm commencing right now. You'll have that confirmed in writing within five minutes." He stood up and walked to the door. "And you can tell Accounting not to worry too much about the back pay," be said, looking back over his shoulder. "I won't be needing it."

Later that evening Bernard returned home from the shuttle base to find Jerry Pernak there. Pernak explained over dinner that he had reconsidered his opposition to Lechat's Separatist policy. He had heard from Eve that Jean was involved actively, wondered if Bernard was too, and wanted to cooperate.

Bernard couldn't see why Pernak had changed his mind. "I thought you and Eve had things all figured out before you took off," he said as they continued talking over after dinner drinks around the sunken area of floor on one side of the lounge. "Look what's happening-you've left, other people are leaving all over. You were right. Just leave the situation alone and let it straighten itself out."

"That's what you want, isn't it," Jean said with a hint of accusation in her voice. "You'd like us to be the way they are. But have you really thought about what that would mean? No standards, no order to anything, no morality...I mean, what kind of a way would that be for Jay and Marie to grow up?"

Jay and Marie were her latest weapons. Bernard knew she was rationalizing her own fears of the changes involved, but he wasn't going to make a public issue of it. "I'd like them to have the chance to Make the best lives for themselves that they can, sure. They've got that chance right here. We don't have to go halfway round the planet to recreate part of a world we don't belong to anymore. It couldn't last.

That's all over now. You have to bring yourself to face up to it, hon."

"We're still the some people," Jay said from the end of the sofa, looking at his mother. "That's not going to change. If you're going to act dumb, you can do that anywhere." To Bernard's mild surprise Jay had shown a lively interest in the conversation all through dinner and had elected to sit in afterward. About time too, Bernard thought to himself.

Jean shook her head, still refusing to contemplate the prospect. "But why does it have to be over?" She looked imploringly at Bernard. "We were happy all those years in the ship, weren't we? We had our friends, like Jerry and Eve, we had the children. There was your job. Why should this planet take it all away from us? They don't have the right. We never wanted anything from them. It's-it's all wrong."

Bernard felt the color rising at the back of his neck. The pathos that she was trying to project was touching a raw nerve. He refilled his gla.s.s with a slow, deliberate movement while he brought his feelings under control. "What makes you so sure I found it all that wonderful?" he asked. "Aren't you a.s.suming the same right to tell me what I ought to want?" He put the bottle down on the table with a thud and looked up. "Well, I didn't think it was so wonderful, and I don't want any more of it. Today I told Merrick to stuff his lob up his a.s.s."

"You what?" Jean gasped, horrified.

"I told him to stuff it. It's over. We can be us now. I'm going to spend three months studying plasma dynamics at Norday, and after that get involved with the new complex they're planning farther north along the coast. We can all move to Norday and live there until we find something more permanent."

Jean shook her head in protest. "But you can't...I won't go. I want to move to Iberia."

"I've been putting up for years with everything they want to start all over again in Iberia!" Bernard thundered suddenly, slamming down his gla.s.s. His face turned crimson. "I hated every minute of it. Who ever asked me if that was what I wanted? n.o.body. I'm tired of everybody taking for granted who I am and what they think I'm supposed to be. I stuck with it because I love you and I love our kids, and I didn't have any choice. Well, now I have a choice, and this time you owe me. I say we're going to Norday, and G.o.dd.a.m.nit we're going to Norday!"

Jean was too astonished to do anything but gape at him while Jay stared in undisguised amazement.

Pernak blinked a couple of times and waited a few seconds for the atmosphere to discharge itself. "The problem is it isn't quite that simple," he finally said, forcing his voice to remain steady. "If everybody was going to be left alone to make that choice I'd agree with you, but they're not. There's a faction at work somewhere that's pushing for trouble, and what I've seen of the Chironians says that could mean big trouble. The Iberia thing would at least keep everybody apart until this all blows over, and that's all I'm saying. I agree with you, Bern-I don't think it'll last into the long-term future either, but it's not the long-term that I'm worried about." He glanced at Jean apologetically. "Sorry, but that's how I think it'll go."

Bernard, now a little calmer with the change of subject, picked up his gla.s.s again, took a sip, and shook his head. "Aren't you overreacting just a little bit, Jerry? Exactly what kind of trouble are you talking about? What have we seen?" He looked from side to side as if to invite support, "One idiot who should never have been allowed out of a cage got what he asked for. I'm sorry if that sounds like a callous way of putting it, but it's what I think. And that's all we've seen."

"Have you seen the news this evening?" Jean asked. "Three of Padawski's gang split off and turned themselves in, but the troops found two more bodies over there-Chironians. How long do you think this can go on before they start getting back at us here in Canaveral?"

Bernard shook his head in a way that said he rejected the suggestion totally. "They won't-they're not like that. They just don't think that way."

"But how can you be so sure?"

"I'm getting to know them."

"And I'm getting to know them better," Pernak told both of them. Something in his tone made them turn their heads toward him curiously. He spread his hands above his knees. "It's not exactly that kind of trouble I'm bothered about. But if this goes further than that...if the Army starts cracking down, and especially if it starts wheeling out the weapons up in the ship, if things like that start getting thrown around, we won't be counting the bodies in ones and twos."

Bernard looked at him uncertainly. "I'm not with you, Jerry. Why should it escalate to anything like that?

The Chironians don't have anything in that league anyway."

"I've seen what they're doing in some of the labs, and believe me, Bern, it's enough to blow your mind,"

Pernak said. "Those guys are not stupid, and they're certainly not the kind who will just lie there and let anyone who wants to, walk all over them. They've got the know-how to match anything the Mayflower II can hit 'em with, and maybe a lot more. They've known for well over twenty years what to expect.

Well figure the rest out yourself."

Bernard stared at his gla.s.s for a few seconds, then shook his head again. "I can't buy it," he said.

"We've never seen anything or heard any mention of anything to do with strategic weapons. Where are they supposed to be?"

"We've only seen Franklin," Pernak replied. "There's a whole planet out there."

"Ghosts in your head," Bernard said. "Come on, Jerry, you're a scientist. Where's your evidence? Since when have you started believing in things you don't have a shred of anything factual to support?"

"Gut-feel," Pernak told him "The weapons have to exist. I tell you, I know how these people's minds work."

Jay stood up and left the room quietly. Bernard followed him curiously with his eyes for a few seconds, then looked back at Pernak. "But it's a h.e.l.l of a thin case for shipping everyone off to Iberia, isn't it? And besides, if you're right, then I'd have thought the best place to stay would be right here-all mixed up together with the Chironians. That way n.o.body's likely to start throwing any big bombs around, right?"