Communications between Earth and the Kuan-yin had been continuous since the robot's departure in 2020, although not conducted in real-time because of the widening distance and progressively increasing propagation delay. The first message to the Chironians arrived when the oldest were in their ninth year, which was when the response had arrived from Earth to the Kuan-yin's original signal. Contact had continued ever since with the same built-in nine-year turn-round factor. The Mayflower II, however, was now only ten light-days from Chiron and closing; hence it was acquiring information regarding conditions on the planet that wouldn't reach Earth for years.

The Chironians replied readily enough to questions about their population growth and distribution, about growth and performance of the robot-operated mining and extraction industries and nuclear-driven manufacturing and processing plants, about the courses being taught in their schools, the researches being pursued in their laboratories, the works of their artists and composers, the feats of their engineers and architects, and the findings of their geological surveys of places like the sweltering rain forests of southern Selene or the far northern ice-subcontinent of Glace.

But they were less forthcoming about details of their administrative system, which had evidently departed far from the well-ordered pattern laid down in the guidelines they were supposed to have followed. The guidelines had specified electoral procedures to be adopted when the first generation attained p.u.b.erty.

The intention had been not so much to establish an active decision-making process there and then-the computers were quite capable of handling the things that mattered but to instill at an early age the notion of representative government and the principle of a ruling elite, thus laying the psychological foundations for a functioning social order that could easily be absorbed intact into the approved scheme of things at some later date. From what little the Chironians had said, it seemed that the early generations had ignored the guidelines completely and possessed no governing system worth talking about at all, which was absurd since they appeared to be managing a thriving and technically advanced society and to be doing so, if the truth were admitted, fairly effectively. In other words, they had to be covering a lot of things up.

Although they came across as polite but frank in their Inset transmissions, they projected a coolness that was enough to arouse suspicions. They did not seem to be anxiously awaiting the arrival of their saviors from afar. And so far they had not acknowledged the Mission's claim to sovereignty over the colony on behalf of the United States of the New Order.

"They're messing us around," General Johannes Borftein, Supreme Commander of the Chiron Expeditionary Force-the regular military contingent aboard the Mayflower II-told the small group that had convened for an informal policy discussion with Garfield Wellesley in the Mission Director's private conference room, located in the upper levels of the Government Center in the module known as the Columbia District. His face was sallow and deeply lined, his hair a mixture of grays shot with streaks of black, and his voice rasped with a remnant of the guttural tw.a.n.g inherited from his South African origins.

"We've got two years to get this show organized, and they're playing games. We don't have the time.

We haven't seen any evidence of a defense program down there. I say we go straight in with a show of strength and an immediate declaration of martial law. It's the best way."

Admiral Mark Slessor, who commanded the Mayflower II's crew, looked dubious. I'm not so sure it's that simple." He rubbed his powerful, blue-shadowed chin. "We could be walking into anything. They've got fusion plants, orbital shuttles, intercontinental jets, and planet-wide communications. How do we know they haven't been working on defense? They've got the know-how and the means. I can see John's point, but his approach is too risky."

"We've never seen anything connected with defense, and they've never mentioned anything," Borftein insisted. "Let's stick to reality and the facts we know. Why complicate the issue with speculation?"

"What do you say, Howard?" Garfield Wesley inquired, looking at Howard Kalens, who was sitting next to Matthew Sterm, the grim-faced and so-far silent Deputy Mission Director.

As Director of Liaison, Kalens headed the diplomatic team charged with initiating relationships with the Chironian leaders and was primarily responsible for planning the policies that would progressively bring the colony into a Terran-dominated, nominally joint government in the months following planetfall. Hence the question probably concerned him more than anybody else. Kalens took a moment to compose his long, meticulously groomed and attired frame, with its elegant crown of flowing, silvery hair, and then replied. "I agree with John that a rigid rule needs to be a.s.serted early on...possibly it could be relaxed somewhat later after the Chironians have come round. However, Mark has a point too. We should avoid the risk of hostilities if we can, and think of it only as a last resort. We're going to need those resources working for us, not against. And they're still very thin. We can't permit them to be frittered away or destroyed. Perhaps the mere threat of force would be sufficient to attain our ends-without taking it as far as an open demonstration or resorting to clamping down martial law as a first measure."

Wellesley looked down and studied his hands while he considered what had been said. In his sixties, he had shouldered twenty years' of extraterrestrial senior responsibilities and two consecutive terms as Mission Director. Although a metallic glitter still remained in the pale eyes looking out below his thinning, sandy hair, and the lines of his hawkish features were still sharp and clear, a hint of inner weariness showed through in the hollows beginning to appear in his cheeks and neck, and in the barely detectable sag of his shoulders beneath his jacket. His body language seemed to say that when he finally had shepherded the Mayflower II safely to its destination, he would he content to stand down.

"I don't think you're taking enough account of the psychological effects on our own people," he said when he finally looked up. "Morale is high now that we're nearly there, and I don't want to spoil it.

We've encouraged a popular image of the Chironians that's intended to help our people adopt an a.s.sertive role, and we've continually stressed the predominance of younger age groups there." He shook his head. "Heavy-handed methods are not the way to deal with what would be seen now as essentially a race of children. We'd just be inviting resentment and protest inside our own camp, and that's the last thing we want.

"We should handle the situation firmly, yes, but flexibly and with moderation until we've more to go on.

Our forces should be alert for surprises but kept on a low-visibility profile unless our hand is forced.

That's my formula, gentlemen-firm, low-key, but flexible."

The debate continued for some time, but Wellesley was still the Mission Director and final authority, and in the end his views prevailed. "I'll go along with you, but I have to say I'm not happy about it," Borftein said. "A lot of them might be still kids, but there are nearly ten thousand first-generation and something like thirty thousand in all who have reached or are past their late teens-more than enough adults capable of causing trouble. We still need contingency plans based on our having to a.s.sume an active initiative."

"Is that a proposal?" Wellesley asked. "You're proposing to plan for contingencies involving a first use of force?"

"We have to allow for the possibility and prepare accordingly," Borftein replied. "Yes, it is."

"I agree," Howard Kalens murmured.

Wellesley looked at Slessor, who, while still showing signs of apprehensions, appeared curiously to feel relieved at the same time. Wellesley nodded heavily. "Very well. Proceed on that basis, John. But treat these plans and their existence as strictly cla.s.sified information. Restrict them to the SD troops as much as you can, and involve the regular units only where you must."

"We ought to pa.s.s the word to the media for a more appropriate treatment from now on as well,"

Kalens said. "Perhaps playing up things like Chironian stubbornness and irresponsibility would harden up the public image a bit...just in case. We could get them to add a mention or two of signs that the Chironians might have armed themselves and the need to take precautions. It could always be dismissed later as overzealous reporting. Should I whisper in Lewis's ear about it?"

Wellesley frowned over the suggestion for several seconds but eventually nodded. "I suppose you should, yes."

Sterm watched, listened, and said nothing.

CHAPTER SIX.

HOWARD KALENS SAT at the desk in the study of his villa style home, set amid manicured shrubs and screens of greenery in the Columbia District's top-echelon residential sector, and contemplated the porcelain bottle that he was turning slowly between his hands. It was Korean, from the thirteenth-century Koryo dynasty, and about fourteen inches high with a long neck that flowed into a bulbous body of celadon glaze delicately inlaid with mishima depicting a willow tree and symmetrical floral designs contained between decorative bands of a repeated foliose motif encircling the stem and base. His desk was a solid-walnut example of early nineteenth-century French rococo revival and the chair in which he was sitting, a matching piece by the same cabinetmaker. The books aligned on the shelves behind him included first editions by Henry James, Scott Fitzgerald, and Norman Mailer; the Matisse on the wall opposite was a print from an original preserved in the Mayflower II's vaults, and the lithographs beside it were by Rico Lebrun. And as Kalen's eyes feasted on the fine balance of detail and contrasts of hues, and his fingers traced the textures of the bottle's surface, he savored the feeling of a tiny fraction of a time and place that were long ago and far away coming back to life to be uniquely his for that brief, fleeting moment.

The Korean craftsman who had fashioned the piece had probably led a simple and uncomplaining life, Kalens thought to himself, and would have died satisfied in the knowledge that he had created beauty from nothing and left the world a richer place for having pa.s.sed through. Would his descendants in the Asia of eight hundred years later be able to say the same or to feel the same fulfillment as they scrambled for their share of ma.s.s-produced consumer affluence, paraded their newfound wealth and arrogance through the fashion houses and auction rooms of London, Paris, and New York, or basked on the decks of their gaudy yachts off Australian beaches? Kalens very much doubted it. So what had their so-called emanc.i.p.ation done for the world except prost.i.tute its treasures, debase its cultural currency, and submerge the products of its finest minds in a flood of ba.n.a.l egalitarianism and tasteless uniformity? The same kind of destructive parasitism by its own ma.s.ses, multiplying in its tissues and spreading like a disease, had brought the West to its knees over half a century earlier.

In its natural condition a society was like an iceberg, eight-ninths submerged in crude ignorance and serving no useful purpose other than to elevate and support the worthy minority whose distillation and embodiment of all that was excellent of the race conferred privilege as a fight and authority as a duty. The calamity of 2021 had been the capsizing of an iceberg that had become top-heavy when too much of the stabilizing ma.s.s that belonged at its base had tried to climb above its center of gravity. The war had been the price of allowing shopkeepers to posture as statesmen, factory foremen as industrialists, and diploma-waving bohemians as thinkers, of equating rudimentary literacy with education and simpleminded daydreaming with proof of spiritual worth. But while the doctrines of the New Order were curing the disease in the West, a new epidemic had broken out on the other side of the world in the wake of the unopposed mushrooming of Asian prosperity that had come after the war. Mankind as a whole, it seemed, would never learn.

"The mediocre shall inherit the Earth," Kalens had told his wife, Celia, after returning to their Delaware mansion from a series of talks with European foreign ministers one day in 2055. "Or else, eventually, there will be another war." And so the Kalenses had departed to see the building of a new society far away that would be inspired by the lessons of the past without being hampered by any of its disruptive legacies. There would be no tradition of unrealistic expectations to contend with, no foreign rivalries to make concessions to, and no clamoring ma.s.ses acc.u.mulated in their useless billions to be kept occupied.

Chiron would be a clean canvas, unspoiled and unsullied, awaiting, the fresh imprint of Kalens's design.

Three obstacles now remained between Kalens and the vision that he had nurtured through the years of presiding over the kind of neofeudal order that would epitomize his ideal social model. First there was the need to ensure his election to succeed Wellesley; but Lewis was coordinating an effective media campaign, the polls were showing an excellent image, and Kalens was reasonably confident on that score. Second was the question of the Chironians. Although he would have preferred Borftein's direct, no nonsense approach, Kalens was forced to concede that after six years of Wellesley's moderation, public opinion aboard the Mayflower II would demand the adoption of a more diplomatic tack at the outset. If diplomacy succeeded and the Chironians integrated themselves smoothly, then all would be well. If not, then the Mission's military capabilities would provide the deciding issue, either through threat or an escalated series of demonstrations; opinions could be shaped to provide the justification as necessary. Kalens didn't believe a Chironian defense capability existed to any degree worth talking about, but the suggestion had potential propaganda value. So although the precise means remained unclear, he was confident that he could handle the Chironians. Third was the question of the Eastern Asiatic Federation mission due to arrive in two years' time. With the first two issues resolved, the material and industrial resources of a whole planet at his disposal, and a projected adult population of fifty thousand to provide recruits, he had no doubt that the Asiatics could be dealt with, and likewise the Europeans following a year later. And then he would be free to sever Chiron's ties to Earth completely.

He hadn't confided that, part of the dream to anyone, not even Celia.

But first things had to come first. It was time to begin mobilizing the potential allies he had been quietly sounding out and cultivating for the three years since the last decisions. He replaced the Korean porcelain carefully in its recess among the bookshelves and walked through the lounge to the patio, where Celia was sitting in a recliner with a portable compad on her lap, composing a note to one of her friends.

The young, sophisticated wife that Howard Kalens had taken with him to Luna to join the Mayflower II was now in her early forties, but her face had acquired character and maturity along with the womanly look that had evolved from girlish prettiness, and her body had filled out to a voluptuousness that had lost none of its femininity. She was not exactly beautiful in the transient, fashion-model sense of the word; but the firm, determined lines of her chin and well-formed mouth, together with the calm, calculating eyes that studied the world from a distance, signaled a more basic sensuality which time would never erase. Her shoulders length auburn hair was tied back in a ponytail, and she was wearing tan slacks with an orange silk blouse covering firm, full b.r.e.a.s.t.s. She looked up as Howard came out of the home. Her expression did not change. Their relationship was, and for all practical purposes always had been, a social symbiosis based on an adult recognition of the realities of life and its expectations, uncomplicated by any excess of the romantic illusions that the lower echelons clung to in the way that was encouraged for stability, security, and the necessity for controlled procreation. Unfortunately, the ma.s.ses were needed to support and defend the structure. Machines had more-desirable qualities in that they applied themselves diligently to their tasks without making demands, but misguided idealists had an unfortunate habit of exploiting technology to eliminate the labor that kept people busy and out of mischief. Too, the idealists would teach them how to think. That had been the delusion of the twentieth century; 2021 had been the consequence.

"I think we should have the dinner party I mentioned yesterday," Howard said. "Can you put together an invitation list and send it out? The end of next week might be suitable-say Friday or Sat.u.r.day."

"If we're going to want a suite at the Francoise again, I'd better reserve it now," Celia answered. "Any idea how many people we're talking about?"

"Oh; not a lot. I want it to be cosy and private. Here should be fine. Probably about a dozen. There's Lewis, of course, and Gerrard. And it's about time we started bringing Borftein closer into the family."

"That man!"

"Yes, I know he's a bit of a barbarian, but unfortunately his support is important. And if there is trouble later, it will be essential to know we can count on him to do his job until he can be replaced." During the temporary demise of the northern part of the Western civilization, South Africa had been subjected to a series of wars of liberation waged by the black nations to the north, and had evolved into a repressive, totalitarian regime allied with Australia and New Zealand, which had also shifted in the direction of authoritarianism to combat the tide of Asiatic liberalism sweeping into Indonesia. Their methods had merit, but produced Borfteins as a by-product.

"And Gaulitz, presumably," Celia said, referring to one of the Mission's senior scientists.

"Oh, yes, Gaulitz definitely. I've plans for Herr Gaulitz."

"A government job?"

"A witch doctor." Kalens smiled at the frown on Celia's face. One of the reasons America declined was that it allowed science to become too popular and too familiar; and therefore an object of contempt.

Science is too potent to be entrusted to the ma.s.ses. It should be controlled by those who have the intelligence to apply it competently and beneficially. Gaulitz would be a suitable figure to groom as a...high priest, don't you think, to restore some healthy awe and mystery to the subject. He nodded knowingly.

"The Ancient Egyptians had the right idea." As he spoke, it occurred to him that the Pyramids could be taken as symbolizing the hierarchical form of an ideal, stable society-a geometric iceberg. The a.n.a.logy was an interesting one. It would make a good point to bring up at the dinner party. Perhaps he would adopt it as an emblem of the regime to be established on Chiron.

"Have you made your mind up about Sterm?" Cells asked.

Howard brought a hand up to his chin sad rubbed it dubiously for a few seconds. "Mmm...Sterm. I can make him out. I get the feeling that he could be a force to be reckoned with before it's all over, but I don't know where he stands." He thought for a moment longer and at last shook his head. "There are some confidential matters that I'll want to bring up. Sterm could turn out to be an adversary. It wouldn't be wise to show too much of our hand this early on. You'd better leave him out of it. Later on it might change...but let's keep him at a distance for the time being."

CHAPTER SEVEN.

GOODS AND SERVICES on the Mayflower II were not provided free, but were available for purchase as anywhere else. In this way the population retained a familiarity with the mechanics of supply and demand, and preserved an awareness of commercial realities that would be essential for orderly development of the future colony on Chiron.

As was usual for a Sat.u.r.day night, the pedestrian precinct beneath the shopping complex and business offices of the Manhattan module was lively and crowded with people. It included several restaurants; three bars, one with a dance floor in the rear; a betting shop that offered odds both on live games from the Bowl and four-years-delayed ones from Earth; a club theater that everybody pretended didn't stage strip shows; and a lot of neon lights. The Bowry bar, a popular haunt of off-duty regular troops, was squeezed into one corner of the precinct next to a coffee shop, behind a studded door of imitation oak and a high window of small, tinted gla.s.s panes that turned the inside lights red.

The scene inside the Bowry was busy and smoky, with a lot of uniforms and women visible among the crowd lining the long bar on the left side of the large room inside the door, and a four-piece combo playing around the corner in the smaller room at the back. Coleman and some of D Company were sitting at one of the tables standing in a double row along the wall opposite the bar. Sirocco had joined them despite the regulation against officers' fraternizing with enlisted men, and Corporal Swyley was up and about again after the diet.i.tian at the Brigade sick bay had enforced a standing order to put Swyley on spinach and fish whenever he was admitted. Bret Hanion, the sergeant in charge of Second Platoon and a long-standing buddy of Colman, was sitting on the other side of Sirocco with Stanislau, Third Platoon's laser gunner, and a couple of civilian girls; a signals specialist called Anita, attached to Brigade H.Q. was snuggling close to Colman with her arm draped loosely through his.

Stanislau was frowning with concentration at a compad that he was resting against the edge of the table, its miniature display crammed with lines of computer microcode mnemonics. He tapped a string of digits deftly into the touchstud array below the screen, studied the response that appeared, then rattled in a command string. A number appeared low down in a corner. Stanislau looked up triumphantly at Sirocco.

"3.141592653," he announced. "It's pi to ten places." Sirocco snorted, produced a five-dollar bill from his pocket and pa.s.sed it over. The bet had been that Stanislau could crash the databank security system and retrieve an item that Sirocco had stored half an hour previously in the public sector under a personal access key.

"How about that?" Hanlon shouted delightedly. "The guy did it!"

"Don't forget-a round of beers too," Colman reminded Sirocco. The girls whooped their approval.

"Where did you learn that, Stan?" Paula, one of the civilian girls, asked. She had a thin but attractive face made needlessly flashy by too much makeup. Her clothes were tight and provocative.

Stanislau slipped the compad into his pocket. "You don't wanna know about that," he said. "It's not very respectable."

"Come on, Stan. Give," Terry, Paula's companion, insisted. Colman gave Stanislau a challenging look that left him no way out.

Stanislau took a long draught from his gla.s.s and made a what-the-h.e.l.l? gesture. "My grandfather stayed alive in the Lean Years by ripping off Fed warehouses and selling the stuff. He could bomb any security routine ever dreamed up. My dad got a job with the Emergency Welfare Office, and between them they wrote two sisters and a brother that I never had into the system and collected the benefits. So life wasn't too bad." He shrugged, almost apologetically. "I guess it got to be kind of a tradition...sort of handed down in the family."

"A real pro burglar Terry exclaimed. "You son-of-a-gun." Hanlon said admiringly.

"Son-of-a-something, anyway," Anita added. They all laughed.

Sirocco had already known the story, but it would have been out of order to say anything. Stanislau's transfer to D Company had followed an investigation of the mysterious disappearance from Brigade stores of tools and electrical spares that had subsequently appeared on sale in the Home Entertainment department of one of the shopping mart.

Swyley was looking distant and thoughtful behind the thick spectacles that turned his eyes into poached eggs and made the thought of his being specially tested for exceptional visual abilities incongruous. He was wondering how useful Stanislau's nefarious skills might he for inserting a few plus-points into his own record in the Military's administrative computer, but couldn't really say anything about the idea in Sirocco's presence. There was such a thing as being too presumptuous. He would talk to Stanislau privately, he decided.

"Where's Tony Driscoll tonight?" Paula asked, straightening up in her chair to scan the bar. "I don't see him around anywhere."

"Don't bother looking," Colman said. "He's got the late duty"

"Don't you ever give these guys a break?" Terry asked Sirocco.

"Somebody has to run the Army. It's just his turn. He's as qualified to do it as anyone else."

"Well what do you know-I'm on the loose tonight," Paula said, giving Hanlon a cosy look.

Bret Hanlon held up a hand protectively. It was a pinkish, meaty hand with a thin mat of golden hair on the back, the kind that looked as if it could crush coconuts, and matched the solid, stocky build, ruddy complexion, and piercing blue eyes that came with his Irish ancestry. "Don't look at me," he said. "I'm contracted now, all nice and respectable. That's the fella you should be making eyes at." He nodded toward Colman and grinned mischievously.

"Do him good too," Sirocco declared. "Then they might make him an engineer. But you'll have a hard time. He's holding out till he's found out what the talent's like on Chiron."

"I didn't know you had a thing about little girls, Steve," Anita teased. "You don't look the type." Hanlon roared and slapped his thigh.

"I've got two sisters you can't get in trouble with," Stanislau offered.

"You got it wrong," Colman told them. "It's not the little ones at all." He widened his eyes in a parody of lewd antic.i.p.ation and grinned. "Think of all those grandmothers." Terry and Paula laughed.

Although Colman was going along with the mood and making a joke out of it, inside he felt a twinge of irritation. He wasn't sure why. Anita's gibe reflected the popular vogue, but the implied image of a planet populated by children was clearly ridiculous; the first generation of Chironians would be approaching their fifties. He didn't like foolish words going into people's heads and coming out again without a thought about their meaning having transpired in between. Anita was an attractive girl, and not stupid. She didn't have to do things like that. Then it occurred to him that perhaps he was being too solemn. Hadn't he just done the same thing?

"Some grandmothers!" Terry exclaimed. "Did anybody see the news today? Some scientist or other thinks the Chironians could be building bombs. There was an interview with Kalens Wo. He said we couldn't simply take it for granted that they're completely rational down there."

"You're not suggesting there'll be a fight, are you?" Paula said.

"I didn't say that. But they're funny people...cagey. They're not exactly giving straight answers about everything."

"You can't just a.s.sume they'll see the whole situation in the Way anyone else would," Anita supplied.

"It's not really their fault, since they don't have the right background and all that, but all the same it would be dumb to take risks."

"It makes sense, I guess," Paula agreed absently.

"Do you figure they might start trouble, chief?" Stanislau asked, turning his head toward Sirocco.

Sirocco shrugged noncommittally. "Can't say. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you stick close to Steve and Bret and do what they tell you, you'll come through okay." Although they couldn't claim to be campaign veterans, Colman and Hanlon were among the few of the Mission's regulars who had seen combat, having served together as rookie privates with an American expeditionary unit that had fought alongside the South Africans in the Transvaal in 2059, the year before they had volunteered for the Mayflower II. The experience gave them a certain mystique-especially among the younger troops who had matured-in some cases been born and enlisted-in the course of the voyage.

"I think it will be all fight if Kalens gets elected," Terry told them. "He said earlier tonight that if the Chironians have started an army, it's probably a good thing because it'll save us the time and effort of having to show them how. What we need to do is show them we're on their side and get our act together for when the PaG.o.da shows up." The EAF starship was designed differently from the Mayflower II. To compensate for the forces of acceleration, it took the form of two cl.u.s.ters of slender pyramidal structures that hinged about their apexes to open out and revolve about a central stem like the spokes of a partly open, two stage umbrella, for which reason it had earned itself the nickname of the Flying PaG.o.da. Terry sipped her drink and looked around the table. "The guy's got it figured realistically. You see, there's no need for a fight. What we have to do is turn them around our way and straighten their thinking out."

"But that doesn't mean we have to take chances," Anita pointed out.

"Oh, sure...I'm just saying there doesn't have to be anything to get scared about."

Colman was becoming irritated again. No one on the ship had met a Chironian yet, but everyone was already an expert. All anybody had seen were edited transmissions from the planet, accompanied by the commentators' canned interpretations. Why couldn't people realize when they were being told what to think? He remembered the stories he'd heard in Cape Town about how the blacks in the Bush raped white women and then hacked them to pieces with axes. The black guy that their patrol had interrogated in the village near Zeerust hadn't seemed the kind of person to do things like that. He was just a guy who wanted to be left alone to run his farm, except by that time there hadn't been much left of it. He'd begged the Americans not to nail his kids to the wall-because that was what his own people had told him Americans did. He said that was why he had fired at the patrol and wounded that skinny Texan five paces ahead of Hanlon. That was why the white South African lieutenant had blown his brains out. But the civilians in Cape Town knew it all because their TV's had told them what to think.

Corporal Swyley wasn't saying anything, which was significant because Swyley was usually a pretty good judge of what was what. His silence meant that he didn't agree with what was being said. When Swyley agreed with something, he said he didn't agree. When he really didn't agree, he said nothing. He never said he agreed with anything. When he had decided that he felt fine after the diet.i.tian discovered the standing order for spinach and fish, the Medical Officer hadn't been able to accuse him of faking anything because Swyley had never agreed with anybody that he was sick; all he'd said was that he had stomach cramps. The M.O. had diagnosed that anybody with stomach cramps on his own time had to be sick. Swyley hadn't. In fact, Swyley had disagreed, which should have been obvious because he hadn't said anything.

"Well, I think there's something to be scared about," Paula said. "Suppose they turn out to be really mean and don't want to mess around with talking at all. Suppose they send a missile up at us without any warning or anything...I mean, we'd be stuck out in s.p.a.ce like a sitting duck, wouldn't we. Then where would we be?"

Sirocco gave a short laugh. "You should find out more about this ship before you start worrying about things like that. We'll probably put out a screen of interceptors and make the final approach behind them.

They'll stop anything before it gets within ten thousand miles. You have to give the company some credit."

Hanlon made a throwing-away motion in the air. "Ah, this is all getting to be too serious for a Sat.u.r.day night. Why are we talking like this at all? Are we letting silly rumors get to us?" He looked at Sirocco.