Time. "What? Pardon. Kindly explain."
Brodersen chuckled as he supposed Admiral Fry would. "You're operating under extreme security. The North American secret service isn't noted for passing confidential documents around carelessly. Neither is the Peace Command. We'll put both our Omega spools in your reader when I arrive, and compare." Scanning for transmission would automatically wipe the encoded information.
Time. "Your mission's really that secret?"
"Since it relates to yours, yes. Colonel, brace yourself. You've been guarding the members of the Emissary expedition. Are you ready to add a follow-up load of nonhumans?"
The effect was as powerful as Brodersen had hoped. (Otherwise he might have turned tail then and there and tried to convey his news to another spacecraft or two, an isolated asteroid base or two, before the watchships hunted him down-poor though the chances were that that would do any good.) Troxell's doubts vanished. They had been feeble from the outset, for he had no grounds for suspecting that anybody outside the government and the Faraday crew had any intimation of the facts.
Still, Brodersen must work warily, though with unlimited brass. In effect, he, holding two pair, was seeking to bluff out a full house. Pretending to knowledge he did not possess, he must get it from Troxell under guise of telling his own story.
As for that: After Emissary returned, the PC had planted an extra guard on the Phoebean T machine. A strange vessel did emerge. She was boarded and her crew made prisoners without resistance. Having already leased Chehalis' well-equipped but idle exploratory ship, the PC took them and their essentials away for safekeeping. To forestall any speculations, Fry declared when he entered the Solar System that his destination was Vesta, and went spaceward of his true goal before doubling back toward it.
Troxell believed. No fool, he nevertheless was predisposed to believe. Brodersen had anticipated that. The warders of the Wheel- twenty-one total, as he learned by feigning a slight misunderstanding -must be of more or less Actionist ideology. Else Quick, studying dossiers, doubtless getting depth-psych examinations made of volunteers "for a confidential assignment of utmost importance," would not have picked them.
Soon Troxell was eager to talk. He needed to justify himself, he who had been penned in for these many weeks with his prisoners who were also his accusers. Brodersen listened patiently, encouragingly to all the antistellar theses. For a minute he was tempted to deny that the detention was proper, an act decided upon by the Council. But no. A few sentences can't overturn a man's faith.
Meanwhile his heart slammed, skin chilled and tingled, soul hallooed, behind a hard-held calm-for in between chunks of the lecture, he caught mentions of truth. The Emissary crew had been eight years at the far end of their gate. They had lost three members. Carlos and Joelle were alive. They maintained the aliens were friendly and anxious to begin cultural exchange. They had an alien with them.
They had an alien with them.
Brodersen could hit on no safe way to find out what the creature looked like. He gathered that it could live under Terrestrial conditions, was of approximately human size, and claimed to be the sole representative its race would send unless mankind freely chose to establish relations- "And later they dispatched a ship of their own regardless, huh?" Troxell said. "How dumb do they suppose we are?"
"Well, they may have found reasons to change their minds," Brodersen temporized. "It has to be investigated, and you've got the only people with experience of them.
"Besides, maybe more important, the Council has decided that we must have far better intelligence of them before we can allow anything to happen. I hope our arresting this group will drive the point home and we won't need to take more drastic measures. You well realize, Colonel, we can't have public hysteria either. Hence the secrecy."
Time. "Yes, of course, Admiral Fry, no argument. Let's discuss arrangements, shall we? What precautions have you in mind?"
-Eventually the conference ended.
Full Earth weight had resumed as Chinook drove onward. The Wheel had grown in sight enough to notice. When outside communication went on standby, the crew became free to load the intercom with jabber. Brodersen knew he must get them properly organized. The venture would be precarious at best.
He stood up, stretched and eased, stretched and eased, till the hardest knots were out of his muscles. Hell take hurry, he decided. Oh, I'll brief them and drill them as well as I can. But that's not awfully well; won't fill more than an hour or two. First we should rest.
First I will go back to Pegeen. It could be our last while together.
XIX
On delicate thrusts of her auxiliary motors, Chinook aligned herself with the open hub of the Wheel. Flame-tinged vapors gushed across night and dissipated. That made possible a rapid bleed off of the enormous electrostatic potential which shielded her against cosmic rays. When she was well positioned, gliding in on a carefully monitored trajectory, a gyro within her began to turn. Her hull gathered spin until it was rotating slightly faster than the station. By then she was quite near.
Her people sat still to avoid motion sickness from radial weight variations and Coriolis force. Brodersen drew comfort from the steady tones of the control officer ahead. His cover yarn accounted for Chinook's absence of insignia other than a registry number and his flamboyant company emblem, as well as the presence of an energy gun turret counterbalanced by a missile tube. Just the same, they might have grown suspicious-perhaps on Earth, to send a warning hither at the speed of light. But evidently not. His heart slugged, though, his jaws ached from being clenched, sweat trickled cold along his ribs and reeked. More than a quarter of a Terrestrial century had gone by since last he was in combat.
The spaceship drifted into the hub at a few meters per second. She was very little off center. (That had better be the case. A vessel her size had scant clearance.) Arms extended from the cylinder wall. Soft-surfaced roller bearings upon them brought Chinook to a halt, bow projecting out the front end, stern and focusing tubes out the rear. Her spin became identical with that of her surroundings at the instant when her main personnel and cargo locks were opposite the correct entry ports. This caused the Wheel to gain angular momentum, but the change was minuscule. After a sufficient number of dockings had significantly affected rotation, a jet in the rim would reduce it.
Since this visitor had no freight to discharge, only a gangtube reached forth to osculate the exit for the crew. A reserve tank filled it with air. Equalized pressure activated a sensor which flashed a green light and beeped. You may come on through.
Brodersen ran wooden tongue over sandy lips. Yet otherwise, as of old, he was abruptly cool, too busy to be nervous. "Okay," he told his men. "Remember our doctrine and signals." He blew a kiss to Caitlin, who stood behind them, a submachine gun in her clasp. Susanne was elsewhere, linked to her computer and, through it, to the whole ship, which would respond to any command she gave. Limited input restricted her to a few basic actions, but Brodersen was glad of even that much backup.
Caitlin touched lips to the muzzle of her weapon and dipped it in his direction. He turned from the glory of her. "Good luck," he wished all his folk, and went ahead.
Centrifugal force, equal to about one-tenth gee, put the airlock under him, but the airlock contained rungs. Beyond its outer valve, the gangtube offered him another set, closely spaced because it was accordion-folded to minimum length. Fluorolight cast odd shadows among the pleats. He bounded down. Low-weight had a magic of its own.
Emerging, he took a short fixed ladder to a balcony-like platform intended to help the unloading of baggage. Thence a second ladder went to the deck; but he stopped where he was and looked. This was the moment before he charged or fled.
Five meters high, a broad corridor arched out of sight on either hand, convex above him, concave below. He saw doors along it which shut off disused facilities. A hatchway led to a spoke, passageway to the rim. The hail was drably painted and carpeted; the draft from ventilator grilles came loud, with a faint smell of oil, a sign of recent neglect.
Men clustered beneath him. Save for Troxell, who was in business tunic and slacks, they wore coveralls. Each had a holstered sidearm: slugthrower, not stunner. Brodersen counted. Twentyone. A measure of optimism lifted in him. The stunt's worked so far. They're here, the lot of them, including the communications and control officers, maintenance technies, quartermaster- It was what he had gotten the colonel to agree to. Lock his present captives in the auditorium. (Brodersen had ascertained where it was located.) Bring his entire following to meet the newcomers and help them escort the nonhumans (who might conceivably use nonhuman capabilities in attempting a break) to a safe place.
"Greeting, sir," Troxell called in English. His bass echoed the least bit between bare panels. "Everything in order?"
"Aye," Brodersen said.
"Come on down."
"Wait a minute. I want a man at my back."
"Huh?"
"Can't be too cautious, can we? Very well, Sergei."
Zarubayev appeared, bearing a tommy gun. He sprang to join his captain. The agents showed surprise. Bearded, long-haired, dressed like them, the Russian jarred on their expectations.
Here we go. Brodersen whipped forth his pistol. Zarubayev's gun swept downward. "Not a move!" Brodersen shouted. "Hands up before we shoot!"
"What the hell-" Troxell's roar cut off when Zarubayev's weapon chattered. The warning burst whanged nastily off the opposite bulkhead. The warders froze.
"Hands on heads," Brodersen commanded. "Quick!-Okay, boys, come on through."
Weisenberg and Leino joined him. They bore automatic rifles, and bundled on their backs were more firearms.
"Stay as you are and nobody will get hurt," Brodersen said. "But whoever acts funny will die. Is that clear? He will die."
Inwardly he begged that that not happen. Those fellows were doing naught but their job. He'd encountered some like them, though, when he truly wore the uniform of the Union, whom he'd helped kill. The commitments on either side had been irreconcilable.
His glance flicked right and left. Zarubayev was smiling, as if he enjoyed this. Maybe he did. Weisenberg stood tense, his mouth stretched out of shape, though his piece never wavered. Leino's face was wet and strained, helmeted in dank hair, and he breathed hard, but he didn't seem frightened either. And me, well, they used to call me the Great Stone Phiz, Brodersen remembered.
Back at the airlock, Dozsa and Caitlin were his reserves, guarding a line of retreat. He wondered how they looked. It was no picnic carrying out a paramilitary operation with amateurs. He'd assigned posts as thoughtfully as might be. Zarubayev, though Demeter born, had grown restless and spent a few years in the PC, interplanetary corps, before he went to work for Chehalis; he'd seen no fighting but had gotten plenty of drill and maneuver. Leino, raised in the wilderness, was a champion marksman. Weisenberg could make any tool a part of his body, and a weapon is a tool. All three had ample space experience. Dozsa did too, but not with arms and seldom outside a ship. Pegeen-Yes, I did what I could in the time that I had. Whether I gauged well, we're about to learn.
Rage racked Troxell's visage. "Are you crazy?" he yelled. "What is this piracy? Do you imagine you can get away clear, you sons o' bitches, you-" He choked.
