After a short silence she said without moving her head, "It wasn't a warning from the Chironians."

The others exchanged puzzled looks. Jean shook her head and looked back at Celia. "I'm sorry, we're not with you. Why-"

"The Chironians didn't kill Howard," Celia said. "I did." A silence descended like steel doors slamming down around the room. Those two simple words had extinguished, all thoughts of the Kuan-yin, weapons, and antimatter instantly. Every head turned disbelievingly to Celia as she sat staring ahead.

Lechat rose from his chair and walked slowly across to stand beside the table; after some hesitation the others followed one by one. Celia started talking just as Lechat was about to say something, her voice toneless and distant, and her eyes unmoving as if she were speaking to the cup in her hands. "I couldn't have spent my life with a man who had closed his mind to reality. You can't know what it was like. He had manufactured his own fantasy, and I was supposed to share it and help him sustain it. It was impossible." She paused to gulp some of the coffee. "So, the thing with Sterm happened and Howard learned about it." Celia closed her eyes as if she were trying to shut out a memory that she was seeing again. "He lost control of himself completely there was a fight, and..." She left the rest unsaid. After a few seconds she opened her eyes and stared blankly ahead again. "Maybe I wanted him to find out-provoked him to it. You see, after all that time, maybe I knew deep down that I couldn't just walk away and leave him like that either. "What other way was there?" Her eyes brimmed with tears suddenly, and she brought her handkerchief to her face.

Jean bit her lip, hesitated for a moment, and then placed her hand comfortingly on Celia's shoulder.

"You mustn't think like that," she urged. "You're trying to take all the guilt upon yourself and-"

Celia raised her head suddenly to look up at Lechat. "But I only shot him twice, not six times as the soldiers found. And the house hadn't been broken into when I left. Don't you see what that means?"

Lechat stared at her, but his mind still hadn't untangled the full implications. Beside him Colman's jaw clamped tight. "Somebody faked it to look like the Chironians did it," Colman grated.

Bernard's jaw dropped. "Sterm?" he gasped, then looked down at Celia. "You did tell him?"

Celia nodded. "That evening, as soon as I got up to the ship. I think I must have been hysterical or something. But yes, I told him."

Lechat was nodding slowly to himself. "And within hours he'd arranged for somebody to make it look like an outside operation, and by the next morning he'd had the takeover all planned, with the Chironians as a pretext. Everything fits. But who would have done it?"

"SDs," Colman said at once. "It was a professional job."

"Would they accept a job like that?" Jean asked, sounding dubious, Colman nodded. "Sure. They're selected and trained to obey orders and not ask questions. Some of them would shoot their own mothers if the right person said so. And Stormbel was in on it. It fits." He thought for a second longer, and then looked at Lechat and Bernard. "There were a lot of suspicious things about Padawski breaking out too. It couldn't have happened the way it did without inside help. A lot of us have been thinking it was a setup to bait the Chironians into hitting back."

Lechat's brows lifted and then creased into an even deeper frown. "And then there were those bombings..." He looked down at Celia. "Was Stern behind those things as well?"

"I wouldn't know, but it wouldn't surprise me," Celia answered. "I just know the true story about Howard because...because..."

"Does anyone else know about Howard?" Colman asked. "Veronica, for instance?"

Celia shook her head. "n.o.body until now."

Colman exhaled a long breath. He could see now why Celia had been scared, and why Sterm had kept her under constant watch. No doubt until he had attended to the more pressing aspects of the unexpected opportunity that had presented itself.

"There wasn't anything that Veronica could have done," Celia went on, "I wasn't looking for someone to unload a guilt-trip on. What I had to say was a lot bigger than that. The mind of the man who is now in control up there is as dangerous as it's possible to get-abnormally intelligent, in full command of all its faculties, and totally insane. Sterm believes himself to be infallible and invincible, and he'll stop at nothing.

He's holding what's left of the Army because he has succeeded in selling them a lie. And I was the only person who could expose that lie. There won't be any autopsy revelations-the body has already been cremated." Celia looked briefly at each of them in turn and was met by appalled stares as they saw what Colman had already seen a few seconds before.

"Yes, I knew I was in danger, but that was secondary," Celia told them. "I still can expose the lie. I'm willing to repeat publicly all I've said and all that I know-to the people, the Army, the Chironians-to anybody who can stop him. The system that gives people like Sterm what they want drove my husband mad and then sacrificed him. There must he no more sacrifices. That was why I had to get away."

CHAPTER.

THIRTY-THREE.

COLMAN LEFT THE Fallows house shortly before midnight with Bernard. Lechat, and Celia. There were more people about in Phoenix than he had antic.i.p.ated, and the pasty reached the post that Sirocco had specified without need for elaborate precautions.

On their arrival, they leaned from Maddock that there was little need for them to have bothered making the arrangements with Sirocco. Border security around Phoenix was disintegrating, with most of the SDs being pulled back to protect the shuttle base, the barracks, and other key points, and the regular troops who were left scattered thinly along the perimeter doing little to interfere with the civilian exodus. A whole platoon of A Company had marched away en ma.s.se while their officers could do nothing but watch helplessly, and the depleted remainder had been merged with the remnants of B Company to bring them up to strength. More SDs were disappearing too. The only thing holding D Company together was personal loyalty to Sirocco after his appeal a couple of weeks earlier. There wasn't really anything to prevent Chironian air vehicles from landing inside phoenix, but the Chironians seemed to be allowing Terran rules to self-destruct and were respecting the proclaimed airs.p.a.ce. Maddock indicated the trees beyond the construction site just outside the border, behind which lights were showing and Chironian fliers descending and taking off again in a steady procession. "No need for you to walk very far," he told them. "I can call Kath and have her send a cab over. What's her number?"

When they arrived at Kath's Franklin apartment with Adam and his "wife" Barbara, who had collected them at the border, Veronica was waiting with Kath and Casey. Colman already knew everybody, and while he and Kath were introducing Bernard and Lechat to those they hadn't met previously, Veronica and Celia greeted each other with hugs and a few more tears from Celia, The atmosphere became more serious as Bernard and Lechat informed the Chironians that they now knew what the Kuan-yin was and what it could do. "We appreciate that you had to a.s.sume that the ship from Earth would be heavily armed and that it might have adopted an overtly hostile policy from the beginning," Lechat said, pacing about the room. "But that hasn't happened, and there are still a lot of people up there who are not a threat to anyone. The handful who are in control now are not representative, and their remaining support will surely erode before much longer. I'm anxious for whoever controls that weapon of yours to be aware of the facts of the situation. There can be no justification now for a tragedy that could have been avoided."

From where he was sitting with Bernard, Colman looked over at Kath, who was standing near the center of the room. "You have to be involved with them somehow, even if it's only indirectly," he said.

"You must know these people, even if you're not one of them yourself."

"What would you wish them to do?" Kath asked, implying that Colman was correct in at least one of his a.s.sumptions without giving any hint of which, She had reacted to the subject with calmness and composure, almost as if she had been expecting it, but there was a firmness in her expression that Colman had not seen on any previous occasion. Her manner conveyed that what was at stake went beyond personal feelings and individual considerations, "They may be a handful," Adam added from across the room, "but they control the ship's heavy weapons. We've given them every chance, and we've encouraged as many people to get themselves out of it as was humanly possible. Our whole world is at stake. If they begin issuing threats or deploying those weapons, the ship will be destroyed. There can be no changing that decision. It was made a long time ago."

Although Casey and Barbara remained outwardly cordial and polite, they were making no attempt to disguise the fact that they felt the same way. Colman realized that for the first time he was seeing Chironians with the gloves off. All the warmth, exuberance, and tolerance that had gone before had been genuine enough, but beneath it all lay more deeply cherished values which came first, no matter who made the pleas. On that, there could be no concessions.

"That's true," Bernard agreed. "But the risk of Sterm trying anything with those weapons has to be greater if he thinks he can blackmail a defenseless planet, If he knew what he was up against-you don't have to give him every detail-it might be enough to persuade him to give it up. That's all we're asking.

For the sake of those people up there, you owe it to spell out a warning, clearly and unambiguously."

"Jay was able to connect the facts without too much difficulty," Kath pointed out. "We didn't try to hide them. Haven't the scientists on the ship done the same?"

"I don't know," was all that Bernard could reply. "If they have, they haven't published it. But does it seem likely? Would Sterm be moving the way he is if they had? But you have nothing to lose by spelling it out to them. It has to be worth a try."

Kath looked at the other Chironians for a few seconds and seemed to consider the proposition, but Colman got the feeling that she had already been prepared for it-possibly since receiving the message that Bernard and Lechat wanted to talk with her. Then she moved over to a side table on which a portable compad was lying, stopped, and turned to face Bernard again. "It isn't a matter for me to decide," she said. "But the people concerned are waiting to talk to you." Bernard and Lechat exchanged puzzled looks. Kath seemed to hesitate for a second, and then looked at Lechat. "I'm afraid we have been taking an unpardonable liberty with you. You see, this was not entirely unexpected. The people you wish to speak with have been monitoring our discussion. I hope you are not too offended."

Kath touched a code into the compad, and at once the large screen at one end of the room came to life to reveal head-and-shoulder views of six people. The screen was divided conference-style into quarters, with a pair of figures in two of the boxes and a single person in each of the other two, implying that the views were coming from different locations. Kath noticed the concerned look that flashed across Bernard's face. "It's all right," she told him. "The channels are quite secure.

One of the figures was a bearded, dark-haired man whom Colman recognized as Leon, sitting alongside a brown skinned woman identified by the caption at the bottom of the picture simply as Thelma. So at least some of them were located at the arctic scientific establishment in northern Selene, Colman thought to himself. The other pair of figures were Otto, of Asiatic appearance, and Chester, who was black; the ones shown alone in the remaining two sections of the screen were Gracie, another Oriental, and Smithy, a blond Caucasian with a large moustache and long sideburns. From their ages they were all evidently Founder. Kath introduced each of them in turn without mentioning t.i.tles, responsibilities, or where any of them were, and the Terrans didn't ask.

Otto seemed to be the spokesman. He seemed anxious to rea.s.sure them. "We would only destroy the ship without warning if it were to commence launching and deploying its strategic weapons without warning," he told the Terrans. "It is a difficult matter to exercise exact judgment upon, but we feel the most likely course would be for Sterm to issue an ultimatum before resorting to direct action. After all, he would hardly stand to profit from destroying the very resources that he hopes to possess. Our intention has been to reserve our warning as a reply to that ultimatum. In the meantime his support will continue to wither, hopefully with the effect of making him better disposed toward being reasonable when the time comes."

"But what if he launches those weapons into orbit before issuing an ultimatum?" Bernard asked.

Leon nodded gravely from his section of the screen. "That is a risk," he agreed. "As Otto said, it is difficult to judge exactly. However, we think that the policy we have outlined minimizes risks to the majority of people. Nothing will eliminate the risks completely." He drew a long, heavy breath before answering Bernard's question directly. "But there can be no alteration of our resolution."

As Leon spoke, Colman looked curiously at Kath to see if he could detect any reaction, but the remained impa.s.sive.

Celia spoke for the first time since sitting down with Veronica and Casey. Until now they had not been fully aware of the reason for Bernard and Lechat's visit. "Either way a wanting won't do any good," she said. "Whether you issue one now or later is academic. He would defy it. You don't know him. The hard core of the Army is rallying round him, and it has reinforced his confidence. He thinks he is unbeatable."

Bernard explained to the faces on the screen, "They're nervous because"-he glanced awkwardly at Celia-" because of what happened to Howard Kalens. Sterm is playing on that."

"That was unfortunate, but it was beyond our control," Leon said. "I hope you do not believe that we were responsible." Bernard shook his head.

After a long silence Otto looked up. "Then I'm afraid we can offer no more."

There seemed to be no more to say. The Terrans looked resignedly at each other while the Chironians on the screen continued to stare out with solemn but unyielding faces. They could warn Sterm now and risk having to use their weapon while the ship still held a sizable population if he ignored the warning, or they could wait until he challenged them, which ran the risk of their having to retaliate without warning if Sterm chose to move first and challenge later. Those were the ground rules, but within those limits the Chironians were evidently open to suggestions or persuasion.

Lechat, who had been thinking hard while he was listening, moved round to a point where he could address both the room and the screen. "Perhaps there is something else we can do," he said. Everybody looked at him curiously and waited. He raised his hands briefly. "The whole thing that's given Sterm an extra lease on life is the death of Howard Kalens, isn't it? Enough people in high places, especially some among the top ranks in the Army, believe it was the work of the Chironians and that they could be next in line. So they're cl.u.s.tering around Sterm for mutual preservation. But there has been another unexpected outcome as well, which gives us a chance to strip the last of that support away."

"What kind of outcome?" Thelma asked from beside Leon, Lechat hesitated and looked uncertainly in Celia's direction. She returned an almost imperceptible nod.

Lechat looked back at the screen. "Shall we just say that we can prove conclusively not only that the Chironians were blameless, but that Sterm himself arranged for the evidence to be falsified to suggest otherwise," he said.

"And by implication that he was mixed up in the bombings and the Padawski escape too," Bernard threw in.

The Chironians suddenly appeared intrigued. "We suspected that it bad to be something like that,"

Casey said, sitting forward on the couch beside Veronica. "But how can you prove it?"

An awkward silence hung over the room. Then Celia said, "Because I killed him. The rest was faked after I left the house. Only Sterm knew about his death."

Murmurs of surprise came from the screen. In the living room, the Chironians were staring at Celia in amazement. Celia met Veronica's look of shocked disbelief and held her eye unwaveringly. Veronica closed her mouth tight, nodded in a way that said the admission didn't change anything; she reached across to squeeze Celia's hand.

Lechat didn't want to see Celia dragged through an ordeal again. He raised his arms to attract attention back to himself. "But don't you see what it means," he said. The voices on the screen and inside the room died away. "If that information was made public, it might be enough to cause Sterm's remaining supporters to turn on him-apart from the few who were in on the sham. Surely if that happened he'd have to see that it was all over. He's hanging on by the thread of a lie, and we possess proof of the truth that can cut that thread. That gives us an option to try resorting to less drastic measures. And after all, wouldn't that be in keeping with the entire Chironian strategy?"

Kath looked apprehensively at Celia. Celia nodded in answer to the unvoiced question. "Yes, that's the way I want it," she said. Kath nodded and accepted the situation at that.

"Exactly what are you asking us to do?" Otto asked from the screen. Lechat tossed up his hands and began pacing again.

"Anything to publicize what we've said...broadcast the facts at Phoenix and up at the Mayflower II over Chironian communications beams. At least some of the population would hear it...the word would soon be spread...I don't know...whatever would bring word to the most people in the shortest time for greatest effect."

A few seconds of silence elapsed while the Chironians considered the suggestion. Their expressions seemed to say it couldn't do any harm, but it probably wouldn't change very much. "Is the case strong enough to turn the whole Army round in a moment?" Kath asked doubtfully at last. "We have no proof about Padawski and the bombings. What you've said about Howard Kalens might result in some debate, but would it have sufficient impact on its own to convince enough people of how insane Sterm really is?

Now, if we could prove all the incidents, all at the same time-"

"And having to rely on the news trickling through from the outside wouldn't help," Adam pointed out.

"There have been so many rumors already. It would be more likely to just fizzle out,"

"It's an idea," Bernard said, looking up at Lechat. "But it needs more of what Kath said-impact."

"I agree, I agree," Lechat told them. "But we only know what we know, and we can only do what we can do. Surely doing so is not going to make things any worse. Will you try it?" Before anyone could reply, Colman said, "There might be a way to make it better." Everyone looked at him. He swept his hands around quickly. "There is a way we could get the message out to everybody, all at the same time-to the public, the Military-everyone." He looked around again. The others waited. "Through the Communications Center up in the ship," he said. "Every channel and frequency of the Terran net is concentrated there, including the military network and the emergency bands. We could broadcast from there on all of them simultaneously. You couldn't make much more impact than that." He sat back and looked around again to invite reactions.

Bernard was nodding but with evident reservations. "True," he agreed. "But it's up in the ship, not down here. And it must be strongly protected. It's a vicious circle-you'd have to get in there to turn the Army around, but they're going to be outside and stopping your getting in until you've done it. How can you break out of it?"

"And from what we've heard, their command structure is all a shambles anyway," Adam commented.

"Could a penetration operation like that be organized now?"

Colman had been expecting something like that. "I know one unit of the Army that could do it," he said.

"And they operate best when n.o.body's trying to organize them."

"Which one is that?" Leon asked from the screen, sounding dubious but also interested.

Colman grinned faintly and gestured across the room. "The same one that brought you Veronica and Celia."

A gleam of hope had come into Lechat's eyes. "Do you really think they might be able to pull something off?"

"If anyone could, they could," Veronica said from across the room. "That bunch could clean out Fort Knox without anyone knowing."

"She's right," Celia agreed simply.

Everybody looked at Colman again, this time with a new interest. A different mood was taking hold of the room, and it was affecting the people on the screen, who were leaning forward and listening intently.

So far it was just an idea, but already it was beginning to hook all of them.

Bernard was rubbing his lip slowly as he thought about it. He caught Lechat's eye and appeared worried. "The message would have to go out live from there," he said slowly.

"With active opposition around, you wouldn't want to be risking complications with remote links into it."

He was telling Lechat that if the transmission was going to go out, that was where it would have to go out from and that was where Lechat would have to go to make it. But more to the point, as Lechat well knew, Bernard was saying that Celia would have to go there too; what she had to say couldn't come second-hand through anybody else.

Lechat pursed his lips for a second, and then nodded curtly. "I'll do it," he said simply. He averted his eyes for a moment longer, and then looked across at Celia. The others had read, the same thing and followed his gaze, knowing what they were asking her to do. Colman could see the torment in her eyes as she looked back at Lechat. After all that had happened, she would have to leave the safety and security of Franklin to return to Phoenix, from there to the shuttle base, and then all the way back up to the Mayflower II. There was no other way.

Celia was already prepared for it. She nodded. Nothing remained to be said. The room had become very quiet.

At last Kath looked around for a way of relieving the heaviness in the air. "How will you get them up to the ship?" she asked Colman.

"I'll leave that to Sirocco," he replied. "He'll know more about the score at the base. We've had a unit there this evening, but they're probably back by now."

"How do you know he'll go along with it?" Barbara asked.

"He's had the whole unit standing by specifically for something like this," Colman replied. "He's waiting for news right now, that's why I'm here."

Celia had become very thoughtful in the last few seconds. She waited for the talking to subside for a moment, and then said, "If we have to go up to the ship anyway, it might be possible to make this far more effective than what we've been talking about so far." She paused, but n.o.body interrupted. "I know where the people who have been arrested are being held. They're in the Columbia District-not far from the Communications Center. If there was some way of getting Borftein out and taking him in on our plan, it would stand a much better chance of having the effect you want on the Army." Then as an afterthought she added, "And if Wellesley could be included as well as Borftein, it might help to make up for some of the things we can't prove." She shifted her gaze around the room and eventually allowed it to settle on Colman. "But I don't know if something like that would be possible."

"What do you think?" Bernard asked Colman after a short silence. "Could it be done?"

"I don't know. It depends on the situation. Maybe. That's something else we'll have to leave to Sirocco to decide."

Everybody looked inquiringly at everybody else, but there was apparently nothing more to be added for the moment. At last Colman rose to his feet. "Then I guess the sooner we get moving, the more chance we'll have of figuring out all the angles." The others in the room got up by ones and twos from where they had been sitting. Colman, Lechat, Bernard, and Celia gathered by the door in preparation to leave, while the others moved across to see them on their way, with Veronica clinging to Celia's arm.

"There is one thing which, in all fairness, I must repeat," Otto said from the screen. They turned and looked back at him. "We cannot alter our basic decision in any way. If Sterm becomes threatening, we will be forced to react. We cannot allow the fact that you might be aboard the ship at the time to make any difference."

Lechat nodded. "That was already understood," he replied grimly.

While the others pa.s.sed through into the hallway of the apartment, Kath turned back toward the screen and touched a control on the compad. All of the views vanished except that of Leon, which expanded to fill the whole screen just as Thelma moved away out of the picture to leave him on his own. "We ought to commence evacuating the Kuan-yin," Kath said. "It looks as if it could be dangerous up there very soon."

"I had already come to that conclusion," Leon replied.-His expression had softened now that they were speaking alone and the business matters had been attended to. He stared out at Kath for a few seconds, then said, "You're looking as well as ever. Are the children keeping fine too?"