There were no more major points to discuss. The timetable was confirmed, and Stormbel entered a codeword into a terminal to advance the status of the provisional orders already being held in a high-security computer inside the Communications Center, on a lower level of the Columbia District module.

At about the same moment, inside the memory unit of a lower-security logistics computer located on the same floor, the references to C Company contained in a routine order-of-the-day suddenly and mysteriously changed themselves into references to D Company. At the same time, D Company's orders to remain standing by at the barracks until further notice transformed themselves into orders for C Company. Ten minutes later a hara.s.sed clerk in Phoenix brought the change to the attention of Captain Blakeney, who commanded C Company. Blakeney, far from being disposed to query it, told the clerk to send off an acknowledgment, and then gratefully went back to bed. Inside the logistics computer in the Mayflower II, an instruction that shouldn't have been in memory was activated by the incoming transmission, scanned the message and identified it as carrying one of the originator codes a.s.signed to C Company, then quietly erased it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX EARLY THAT EVENING, Sirocco presented himself at the Transportation Controller's office in the Canaveral shuttle base to advise that D Company had arrived for embarkation as ordered. Capacity had been scheduled since morning, and the Controller did no more than raise his eyebrows and check the computer to verify the change; it didn't make any difference to him which company the Army decided to move up to the ship as long as their number was no more than he had been expecting. An hour later the company marched off the shuttle in smart order, and after clearing the docking-bay area in Vandenberg, dispersed inconspicuously to their various destinations around the Mayflower II. Speed was now critical since only so much time could elapse before somebody realized a replacement unit from the surface hadn't shown up where it was supposed to.

The section a.s.signed to the Columbia District split up into small groups that came out of the Ring transit tube at different places inside the module and at staggered times. Colman, Hanlon, and Driscoll got off with Lechat, who was dressed to obscure his appearance since he was presumably still high on Sterm's wanted list. They rendezvoused with Carson and three others a few minutes later, then they headed via a roundabout route for the Francoise restaurant, which was situated on a public level immediately below the Government Center complex.

All entrances into the Center itself were guarded. Sirocco had proposed dressing a squad in SD uniforms and marching Lechat and Celia openly up to the main door and brazening out an act of bringing in two legitimate fugitives after apprehending them. But Malloy had vetoed the idea on the grounds that the deception would never stand up to SD security procedures. Then Lechat had suggested a less dramatic and less risky method. As a regular customer of the Francoise for many years, he was a close friend of the manager and had spent many late nights discussing politics with the staff until way after closing. They all knew Lechat, and he was sure he could rely on them. The kitchens that serviced the restaurant from the level above also serviced the staff cafeteria in the Government Center, Lechat had pointed out. There had to be service elevators, laundry chutes, garbage ducts-something that connected through from the rear of the Francoise.

The party arrived at the little-used connecting pa.s.sage running behind the Francoise and its neighboring establishments, and the soldiers waited among the shadows of the surrounding entrances and stairways while Lechat tapped lightly on the rear door of the restaurant. After a few seconds the door opened and Lechat disappeared inside. Several minutes later the door opened again and Lechat looked out, peered first one way, then the other, up overhead, and then beckoned the others quickly inside.

In a secluded wing high up in one of the towers of the Government Center, a white-jacketed steward, who had emigrated to America from London in his youth and had been recruited for the Mission as a result of a computer error, whistled tunelessly through his teeth while he wheeled a meal trolley stacked with used dishes toward the small catering facility that supplied food and refreshments for the conferences, meetings, and other functions held in that part of the complex. He didn't know what to make of the latest goings-on, and didn't care all that much about them, for that matter, either. It was all the same to him. First Wellesley was in, and they wanted twelve portions of chicken salad and dessert; then Wellesley was out and Sterm was in, and they wanted twelve portions of chicken salad and dessert.

It didn't make any difference to him who- A hand slid across his mouth from behind, and he was quickly whisked into the still-room next to the pantry. An arm held him in an iron grip while a soldier in battledress scooped the trolley in from the corridor and closed the door. There were more of them in there, with a civilian. They looked mean and in no mood for fooling around.

The hand over his mouth loosened a fraction after the door was closed. "Gawd! Wot's goin' on? Who -- ?" Somebody jabbed him in the ribs. He shut up.

"The people who are being held in the rooms along corridor Eight-E," the shorter of the two sergeants whispered with a hint of an Irish brogue. "You take their food in?" The steward gulped and nodded vigorously. "When is the evening meal due?"

"Abaht ten minutes," the steward said. "I'm supposed ter collect it next door any time nah." In the background, one of the soldiers was stripping off his blouse and unbuckling his belt "Start taking off the jacket and the vest," the Irish sergeant ordered. "And while you're doing it, you can tell us the routine."

Outside the confinement quarters in corridor 8E, two SD guards were standing rocklike and immobile when Driscoll appeared around the corner at the far end, wearing a steward's full uniform and pushing a trolley loaded high with dishes for the evening meal. Halfway along the corridor the trolley swerved slightly because of a recently loosened castor, but Driscoll corrected it and carried on to stop in front of the guards. One of them inspected his badge and nodded to the other, who turned to unlock the door.

As Driscoll began to move the trolley, it swerved again and b.u.mped into the nearest guard, causing the soup in a carelessly covered tureen to slop over the rim and spatter a few drops on the guard's uniform.

"Oh, Christ!" Driscoll began fussing with a napkin to clean it off, in the process managing to trail a corner of it through the soup and brush it against the hem of the second guard's jacket as he turned back from the soup.

Driscoll moaned miserably and started dabbing it off, but was shoved away roughly. "Get off, you clumsy a.s.shole," the guard growled. Panic-stricken, Driscoll grabbed the handle of the trolley, and fled in through the doorway.

Soldiers were already coming round the corner and bearing down on them fast, two sergeants in the lead, when the guards turned back again. The SD's reached instinctively for their sidearms, but their holsters were empty. For three vital seconds they were too confused to go for the alarm b.u.t.ton on the wall-panel behind them. Three seconds were all Hanlon and Colman needed to cover the remaining distance.

Inside the room, the captives looked around in surprise as m.u.f.fled thuds sounded just outside the door.

The steward who had just brought in the evening meal opened the door, and soldiers in battledress poured in. Wellesley gasped as he saw Lechat with them. "Paul!" he exclaimed. "Where have you been hiding? You're the only one they didn't pick up. What-"

Lechat cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Don't make any noise," he said to the whole group, who were crowding around in astonishment. "Everything is okay." He signaled Borftein over with another wave of his hand. Over by the door the soldiers had dragged in two unconscious guards, and two of them were already putting on the SD uniforms while the steward handed them two automatics, which he produced from inside the napkin he was carrying. "There isn't a lot of time," Lechat advised Wellesley and Borftein. "We have to get you downstairs and into the Communications Center. Now listen, and I'll give you a quick rundown on the situation..."

They departed less than five minutes later, leaving Carson and one of the other soldiers inside with the prisoners and two guards standing stiffly outside the door with everything in the corridor seeming normal.

Hanlon took Wellesley, Borftein, and Lechat to a storeroom near the Communications Center where they could remain out of sight. Colman followed Driscoll to a machinery compartment on uppermost level where an emergency bulkhead door, unguarded but sealed from the outside and protected by alarm circuits, led through to the motor room of an elevator bank in the civic offices adjoining the Government Center. Colman traced, checked, and neutralized the alarms. Then he double-checked what he had done, and nodded to Driscoll, who was waiting by the door; Driscoll opened the latches and swung the door outward while Colman held his breath. The alarms remained inactive. Sirocco was waiting on the other side with Bernard Fallows, who was wearing engineer's coveralls and carrying a toolbox.

"Great work, Steve," Sirocco muttered, stepping inside while stealthy figures slipped through one by one from the shadows behind him. "How did the Amazing Driscoll go over?"

"His best performance ever. Everything okay out there?"

"It seems to be. How about Borftein and Wellesley?" Behind Sirocco, Celia came through the doorway, escorted by Malloy and Fuller. Stanislau was behind, carrying a field compack.

Colman nodded. "Gone to the storeroom with Hanlon and Lechat. Everything was quiet upstairs when we left"

Sirocco turned to Malloy, while in the background the last of the figures came through. "Okay, you know where to go. Hanlon should be there now with the others." Malloy nodded. "We'll make a soldier out of you yet," Sirocco said to Celia. "You're doing fine. Almost there now." Celia returned a thin smile but said nothing. She moved away with the others toward the far side of the compartment. Meanwhile Stanislau had set up the compack and was already calling up codes onto the screen. He had practiced the routine throughout the day and was quickly through to the schedule of SD guard details inside the Government Center, The next part was going to be the trickiest. The information obtained by Stanislau had confirmed that the outside entrances to the complex, which had already been bypa.s.sed, were the most strongly guarded, and the three inner access points to the Communications Center itself-the main foyer at the front, the rear lobby, and a side entrance used by the staff-were covered by less formidable, three-man security teams. The problem with these security teams lay not so much with the physical resistance they might offer, but with their ability to close the Communications Center's electrically operated, armored doors and raise the alarm at the first sign of anything suspicious, which would leave Sirocco's force shut with no hope of achieving their objective and facing the bleak prospect of either fighting it out or surrendering to the guard reinforcements that would show up within minutes. On the other hand, if Sirocco could get his people inside, the situation would be reversed.

Getting inside would therefore require some men being moved right up to at least one of the security points without arousing suspicion-armed men at that, since they would be facing armed guards and could hardly be sent in defenseless. Malloy had again discouraged ideas of attempting to impersonate SD's. The only alternative came from Armley-a bluff, backed up with information manufactured by Stanislau, to the effect that regular troops were being posted to guard duties inside the complex as well as SD's, and providing reliefs from D Company. Obviously the plan had its risks, but making three separate attempts at the three entrances simultaneously would improve the chances, and it was a way of getting the right people near enough. In the end, Sirocco agreed. Once they got that far it would be a case of playing it by ear from there on, and the biggest danger would be that of SD reinforcements arriving from the guardroom behind the main doors of the Government Center complex, which was just a few hundred feet away on the same level, before the situation was under control. That was the part that Bernard Fallows had come along to handle.

Stanislau stood back from the compack and announced that the changes were completed. Sirocco peered at the screen, checked the entries in the revised schedule that Stanislau had produced, and nodded. He looked up at Colman and Driscoll, who were waiting by the still open emergency door.

"Okay, the last ball's rolling," he told them. "On your way. Good luck."

"You too," Colman said. He and Driscoll left for the forward section of the Spindle to join Swyley, who, if all was going well, would already be organizing the men drifting in from various parts of the ship to block off the Battle Module.

Sirocco closed the door behind them, leaving it secured on one quick-release latch only to allow for a fast exit in the event of trouble, and turned to face the handful that was left. "Let's go," he said, They crossed the machinery compartment in the direction the others had taken, pa.s.sed through an instrumentation bay, and ascended two flights of steel stairs to reenter the Government Center proper behind offices that had been empty since the end of the voyage, using a bulkhead hatch that Colman and Driscoll had opened on their way down. There was no sign of the others who had gone ahead. Here the group split three ways.

Stanislau and two others, moving carefully and making use of cover since they were now in a part of the complex that was being used, headed for the storeroom near the front foyer of the Communications Center to join Hanlon's group, which by now should have been swollen by the arrival of Celia, Malloy, and Fuller; Sirocco took three more to where another group was a.s.sembling near the approaches to the rear lobby; and Bernard with his toolbox strolled away casually on his own toward the corridor that connected the Communications Center to the main entrance of the complex.

Fifteen minutes later, inside an office that opened onto a pa.s.sageway to the rear lobby of the Communication Center, an indignant office manager and two terrified female clerks were sifting on the floor with their hands clasped on the top of their heads, under the watchful eye of one of the soldiers who had burst in suddenly brandishing rifles and a.s.sault cannon. "What do you think you're trying to do?" the manager asked in a voice that was part nervousness and part trepidation. "We don't want to get mixed up in any of this."

"Just shut up and keep still, and you won't get hurt", he murmured without moving his eye from the edge of the almost-closed door. "We're just pa.s.sing through". After a short silence Sirocco tensed suddenly.

"Here they come...just two of them with a sergeant," he whispered. "Get ready. There are two guys talking by the coffee dispenser. We'll have to grab them too. Faustzman, you take care of them." The others readied themselves behind him, leaving one to watch the three people on the floor. Outside in the pa.s.sageway, the SD detail on its way to relieve the security guards at the tear lobby was almost abreast of the door.

"Freezer Sirocco stepped out in front of them with his automatic drawn and Stewart beside him holding a leveled a.s.sault cannon. Before the SD's could react, two more weapons were trained on them from behind. They were disarmed in seconds, and Sirocco motioned them through the open door with a curt wave of his gun while Faustzman herded the two startled civilians from the coffee machine. Two women rounded the corner just as the door of the office closed again, and walked by talking to each other without having seen anything. Moments later Sirocco left the office again with two privates. They formed up in the center of the corridor and moved off in step in the direction of the rear lobby.

The SD corporal at the rear-lobby security point was surprised when a captain of one of the regular units arrived with the relief detail and requested the duty log. "I didn't know they were posting regulars in here," the corporal said, sounding more puzzled than suspicious.

Sirocco shrugged. "Don't ask me. I thought it was because a lot of SD's are shipping down to Canaveral. I just do what the orders say."

"When was it changed, Captain?"

"I don't know, Corporal. Recently, I guess."

"I better check those orders." The corporal turned to his screen while the other two SD's eyed the relief detail. After a few seconds the corporal raised his eyebrows. "You're right. Oh, well, I guess it's okay."

The other two SD's relaxed a fraction. The corporal called up the duty log and signed his team off. "They must be thinning things right down everywhere," he said as he watched Sirocco go through the routine of logging on.

"Looks like it," Sirocco agreed. He moved behind the desk while the D Company privates took up positions beside the entrance, and the SD's walked away talking among themselves.

A few seconds after the SD's disappeared, figures began popping from a fire exit behind the elevators on the far side of the lobby, and vanishing quickly and silently into the Communications Center.

Meanwhile, the SD sergeant at the main foyer was being conscientious. "I don't care what the computers say, Hanlon. This doesn't sound right to me. I have to check it out." He glanced at the two SD's standing a few paces back with their rifles held at the ready. "Keep an eye on him while I call the OOD." Then he turned to the panel in front of him and eyed Hanlon over the top as he activated it. "Hold it right where you are, buddy." Hanlon tensed but there was nothing he could do. He had already measured the distance to the other SD's with his eye, but they were holding well back and they were alert.

Suddenly, from the outer entrance to the foyer behind Hanlon, a firm, authoritative voice ordered, "Stop that!" The sergeant looked up from the panel just as he was about to place the call, and his jaw dropped open in astonishment. Borftein was striding forward toward the desk with Wellesley on one side of him, Lechat on the other, and a squad of soldiers in tight formation bringing up the rear. Celia and Malloy were between them. The two SD guards glanced uncertainly at each other.

The SD sergeant half rose from his seat. "Sir, I didn't-I thought-"

Borftein halted and stood upright and erect before the desk. "Whatever you thought was mistaken. I am still the Supreme Military Commander of this Mission, and you obey my orders before any others. Stand aside."

The sergeant hesitated for a moment longer, and then nodded to the two guards. Borftein and his party marched through, and Hanlon began posting men to secure the entrance, another section of D Company materialized from a stairwell to one side of the foyer and vanished into the Communications Center, taking with them a few bewildered secretaries and office workers that they had b.u.mped into on the way.

But no Borftein was present to save the situation at the side entrance. "I don't know anything about it,"

the SD Officer of the Day said from the screen in reply to the call the guard there had put through.

"Those orders are incorrect. Detain those men." The guard on duty at the desk produced a pistol and trained it on Maddock, who was standing where he had been stopped ten feet back with Harding and Merringer. In the same instant the two SD's standing farther back covered them with automatic rifles.

"Down!" Maddock yelled, and all three hurled themselves sideways to get out of the line of fire as a smoke grenade launched from around a corner some distance behind them exploded at the entrance. Fire from the entranceway raked the area as the D Company squad broke cover and rushed forward through the smoke, hut the first of them was still twenty feet away when the steel door slammed down and alarms began sounding throughout the Government Center.

Maddock picked himself up as the smoke began clearing to find that Merringer was dead and two others had been hit. The only hope for safety now was to make it to the front lobby before Hanlon was forced to close it, a.s.suming Hanlon had got in. "Go first with four men," he shouted at Harding. "Fire at any SD's who get in the way. They know we're here now." He turned to the others. "Grab those two and stick with me. You two, stay with Crosby and cover the rear. Okay, let's get the h.e.l.l out."

But SD's were already pouring out of the guardroom behind the main doors of the Government Center and racing along the corridor toward the communications facility while civilians flattened themselves against the walls to get out of the way, and others who had been working late peered from their offices to see what was happening. The engineer in coveralls who had been working inconspicuously at an opened switchbox through an access panel in the floor closed a circuit, and a reinforced fire-door halfway along the corridor-closed itself in the path of the oncoming SD's. The SD major leading the detachment stared numbly at it for a few seconds while his men came to a confused halt around him. "Back to the front stairs," he shouted. "Go up to Level Three, and come down on the other side."

On the other side of the fire-door, Bernard dropped his tools and ran back to the front lobby of the Communications Center, praying that the alarm hadn't been raised from there. Hanlon and Stanislau were waiting outside the entrance with a handful of the others. Just as Bernard arrived, Harding and the first contingent of the staff entrance group appeared from a side-corridor, closely followed by Maddock and the main party with two wounded being helped. Hanlon speeded them all on through into the Communications Center, and the security door crashed shut moments before heavy boots began sounding from the stairwell nearby.

Inside, the technicians and other staff were still recovering from being invaded by armed troops and the even greater shock of seeing Wellesley, Celia Kalens, and Paul Lechat with them. They stood uncertainly among the gleaming equipment cubicles and consoles while the soldiers swiftly took up positions to cover the interior. Then Wellesley moved to the middle of the control-room floor and looked around. "Who is in charge here?" he demanded. His voice was firmer and more a.s.sured than many had heard it for a long time.

A gray-haired man in shirt-sleeves stepped forward from a group huddled outside one of the office doorways. "I am," he said, "McPherson-Communications and Datacenter Manager." After a short pause he added, "At your disposal."

Wellesley acknowledged with a nod and gestured toward Lechat. "Speed is essential," Lechat said without preamble. "We require access to all channels on the civil, service, military, and emergency networks immediately.

The Battle Module was a mile-long concentration of megadeath and ma.s.s destruction that sat on a base formed by the blunt nose of the Spindle, straddled by two pillars that extended forward to support the ramscoop cone and its field generators, and which contained the ducts to carry back to the midships processing reactors the hydrogen force-fed out of s.p.a.ce when the ship was-at ramspeed. Sleek, stark, -- menacing, and bristling with missile pods, defensive radiation projectors, and ports for deploying orbital and remote-operating weapons systems, it contained all of the Mayflower II's strategic armaments, and could detach if need be to function as an independent, fully self-contained warship.

The Battle Module was not intended to be part of the Mayflower II's public domain, and restriction of access to it had been one of its primary design criteria. Personnel and supplies entered the module via four enormous tubular extensions, known as feeder ramps, that telescoped from the main body of the ship to terminate in cupolas mating with external ports in the Battle Module, two forward and two aft its midships section. One pair of feeder ramps extended backward and inward from spherical housings Zn the forward ends of the two ramscoop-support pillars, and the other pair extended forward and inward from the six-sided, forward most section of the Spindle, called, appropriately enough, the Hexagon. As if having to get through the feeder ramps wasn't problem enough, the transit tubes, freight handling conveyors, ammunition rails, and other lines running through to them from the Spindle all came together at a single, heavily protected lock to pa.s.s through an armored bulkhead inside the Hexagon. Aft of the bulkhead, the lock faced out over a three-hundred-foot long, wedge-shaped support platform upon which the various lines and tubes converged through a vast antechamber amid a jungle of girder and structural supports, motor housings, hoisting machinery, ducts, pipes, conmaintenance ladders, and catwalks. There was no other way through or round the bulkhead. The only route forward from the Hexagon was through the lock, It's impregnable, Colman thought to himself as he lay p.r.o.ne behind a girder mounting high up in the shadows at the back of the antechamber and studied the approaches to the lock. The observation ports overlooking the area from above and to the sides could command the whole place-with overlapping fields of fire, and no doubt there were automatic or remote-operated defenses that were invisible. True, there was plenty of cover for the first stages of an a.s.sault, but the final rush would be suicidal-and probably futile since the lock doors looked strong enough to stop anything short-of a tactical missile.

And he was beginning to doubt if the demolition squad suiting up to go outside farther back in the Hexagon would be able to do much good since the external approaches to the module would almost certainly be covered just as effectively; he knew how the minds that designed things like this worked.

"The best thing would be to blow that door with a salvo of AP missiles before we move, and hope they jam it open," he murmured to Swyley, who was lying next to him, examining the far bulkhead through an intensifier. "Then maybe drench the lock with incendiary and go in under smoke."

"That's only the first door," Swyley reminded him, lowering the instrument from his eyes. "There are two of them. Whatever we do to that one won't stop them from closing the second one."

"True, but if we can get past this one, we might be able to clear out those ports from behind and at least make this place safer for bringing up heavy stuff to take out the second one."

"And then what?" Swyley said. "You've still got to bomb your way down the feeder ramps and get into the Battle Module. Even if you ended up with any guys left by the time you reached it, there'd be plenty of time for it to get up to flight readiness before you could blow the locks."

"Got any better ideas?" For once Swyley didn't.

At that moment the emergency tone sounded simultaneously from both their communicators, and warning-bleeps and wails went up from places in the labyrinth all around. They looked at each other for a second. The noise died away as Colman fished his unit from his breast pocket and held it in front where both of them could watch it, while Swyley deactivated his own. A few seconds later, the faces of Wellesley, Borftein, and Lechat appeared on the tiny screen. Colman closed his eyes for a moment and breathed a long, drawn-out sigh of relief. "They made it," he whispered. "They're all in there."

"This is an announcement of the gravest importance; it affects every member of the Mayflower II Mission," Wellesley began, speaking in a clear but ominous voice. "I am addressing you all in my full capacity as Director of this Mission. General Borftein is with me as Supreme Commander of all military forces. Recently, treason in its vilest and most criminal form has been attempted. That attempt has failed.

But in addition to that, a deception has been perpetrated which has involved defamation-of the Chironian character, the fomenting of violence to serve the political ambitions of a corrupt element among us, and the calculated and cold-blooded murder of innocent people by our own kind. I do not have to remind you.

"That has to give us the rest of the ship and the surface," Swyley said. "If the Army gets its act together and grabs Sterm before he gets a chance to head this way, then we might not have to go in there at all."

Colman lifted his head and stared again out over the impossible approaches to the bulkhead lock, picturing once more the inevitable carnage that a frontal a.s.sault would entail. Who on either side would stand to gain anything that mattered to them? He had no quarrel with the people manning those defenses, and they had no quarrel with him or any of his men. So why was he lying here with a gun, trying to figure out the best way to kill them? Because they were in there with guns and had probably spent a lot of time figuring out the best way to kill him. None of them knew why they were doing it. It was simply that it had always been done.

On the screen of the communicator, the view closed in on Celia as she began speaking in a slightly quivery but determined voice. But Colman only half heard. He was trying to make himself think the way a Chironian would think.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

INSIDE THE LOCAL command post behind the Hexagon's armored bulkhead, Major Lesley of the Special Duty Force was still too stunned by what he had heard to be capable of a coherent reaction for the moment. He stared at the companel where a screen showed a view from the Columbia District, where the SD guard commander had entered the Communications Center under a truce flag some minutes previously to talk with Borftein, and tried to separate the conflicting emotions in his head. Captain Jarvis, Lesley's adjutant officer, and Lieutenant Chaurez watched in silence while around the command post the duty staff averted their eyes and occupied themselves with their own thoughts. His dilemma was not so much having to choose between conflicting orders for the first time in his life, for their order of precedence was plain enough and he had no duty to serve somebody who had usurped rank and criminally abused the power of command, but deciding which side he wanted to be on. Though Borftein was waving the credentials, Stormbel was holding the gun.

Jarvis scanned the screen on the far side of the post. "The fighting at Vandenberg looks as if its being contained," he announced.-"Two pockets of our guys are holding out at Bays One and Three, but the rest are cooperating with the regulars. The regulars have pretty well secured the whole module already.

Stormbel won't be getting any help from the surface through there."

"What's the latest from the surface?" Chaurez inquired.

"Confused but quiet at the barracks," Jarvis told him. "A lot of shooting inside the base at Canaveral.

Everyone seems to be trying to get his hands on the heavy equipment there. A shuttle's on fire in one of the launch bays."

Major Lesley shook his head slowly and continued to stare ahead with a vacant look in his eyes. "This shouldn't be happening," he murmured. "They're not the enemy. They shouldn't be fighting each other."

Jarvis and Chaurez glanced at each other. Then Jarvis looked away as a new report came up on one of the screens. "Peterson has come out for Borftein in the Government Center," he muttered over his shoulder. "I guess it's all over in the Columbia District. That has to give them the whole Ring."

"So they'll be coming for the Spindle next," Chaurez said. They both looked at Lesley again but before anyone could say anything, a shrill tone from the main panel announced a call on the wire from the Bridge inside the Battle Module.

Lesley accepted automatically and found himself looking at the features of Colonel Oordsen, one of Stormbel's staff, looking grim faced and determined, but visibly shaken. "Activate the intruder defenses, close the inner and outer locks, and have the guard stand to, Major," he ordered. "Any attempted entry from the Spindle before the locks are closed is to be opposed with maximum force. Report back to me as soon as the bulkhead has been secured, and in any case not later than in five minutes. Is that understood?"

At that moment a local alarm sounded inside the command post. Within seconds the sounds of men running to stations came from the pa.s.sageways and stain to the rear. One of the duty crew was already flipping switches to collect report summaries, and Chaurez got up to go to the outer observation room just as the Watch Officer appeared in the doorway from the other side. "There are troops approaching the lock," the Watch Officer announced. "Regulars-thirty or more of them."

Leaving Colonel Oordsen peering out of the screen, Lesley rose and walked through the door in the steel wall dividing the command post from the observation room and looked down through one of the ports at the approaches to the lock below. Chaurez watched from the doorway, ignoring Oordsen's indignant voice as it floated through from behind. "Major Lesley, you have not been dismissed. Come back at once. What in h.e.l.l's going on there? What are those alarms? Lesley, do you hear me?"

But Lesley was not listening as he gazed down at the platform below, which fanned outward from the arc lights above the lock to become indistinct in the darkness of the antechamber. Figures-were moving slowly from the shadows by the transit tubes and freight rails, spread thinly at the back, but closing up as they converged with the lines of the platform. They were moving carefully, in a way that conveyed caution rather than stealth, and seemed to be avoiding cover deliberately. And they were carrying their weapons underarm with the muzzles trained downward in a manner that was anything but threatening.

"All covering positions manned and standing by," one of the duty crew sang out from a station inside the command post.

"LCP's standing by and ready to fire," another voice reported.

"Intruder defenses primed and ready to activate."

"Lock at condition orange and ready to close."

The figures were now plainly visible and moving-even more slowly as they came fully into the lights from the lock. They were regular infantry, Lesley could see. A tall sergeant and a corporal with gla.s.ses were leading a few paces in front of the others. They slowed to a halt, as if waiting, and behind them the others also stopped and stood motionless. Lesley's jaw tightened as he stared down through the observation port. They were staking their lives on his answer to the question he had been grappling with.

Jarvis appeared Suddenly in the doorway beside Chaurez. "Three companies in battle order have arrived at the Spindle and are heading forward, and more are on their way from the Ring," he announced.

"Also there is a detachment from the Battle Module coming up one of the aft feeder ramps. They must be coming back to close the lock."

Lesley looked at the two of them, but they said nothing. There was nothing more they could tell him. He could close the lock and commit himself to the protecting the Battle Module's armaments; alternatively, with the added strength of the regulars who had arrived below. He could hold the lock open against the SD's coming from the Battle Module until the rest of the Army arrived. It was time for him to decide his answer.

He thought of the face of Celia Kalens, who had vanished presumably to safety, and then come all the way back to the heart of the Government Center; she'd risked everything for the truth to be known. Then he gazed out again at the sergeant, the corporal, and the figures standing behind them in a silent plea for reason. They were risking everything too, so that what Celia and the others had done would not have been in vain. Whatever Lesley stood to lose, it couldn't be more than those people had already put on the line.