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Chapter Thirty-Six

The scene being presented inside the Jevlenese War Room was a view of the combined Terran battle fleet forming up as it moved from Earth. In the foreground a formation of destroyers, sleek, gray, and menacing, was moving into position to become part of an unfolding armada that extended away as far as the eye could see. As the first shrank into the distance to merge into the array, more formations slid majestically inward from the sides of the view and were absorbed in turn into the growing panorama. The first groups carried the Red Star of the Soviet Union, the next ones the Stars and Stripes of the U.S.A., and after those came the emblems of U.S. Europe, Canada, Australia, and the Republic of China. Farther away, moving slowly behind the vessels maneuvering and turning in the foreground, were lines of immense warships, their stark, solid contours broken by sinister weapon housings and ominous clusters of externally mounted missile pods. And behind them were the task groups and supply convoys—carriers, bombardment platforms, battle cruisers, interceptor mother ships, ground-suppression orbiters, shuttle launchers, troop and armor carriers, transports, all attended by swarms of support and escort craft—diminishing away to become pinpoints that seemed to be hardly moving at all against the stars. But appearances were deceiving. The whole awesome constellation was speeding silently and relentlessly away from Earth—toward the Ganymean transfer ports.
JEVEX’s comments came through on audio. "The first wave, moving out from its forming-up area near Luna. Measured acceleration is consistent with the arrival time that the Terrans have indicated."
Broghuilio turned a shade paler. "First wave?" he gasped. "There’s more?"
In response the scene changed to show a view looking down on what appeared to be a huge base of some kind, enclosed by a perimeter fence and surrounded by desolate, sandy terrain. Lines of dots along one side expanded rapidly as the view enlarged, and resolved themselves into rows of surface shuttles in the process of being loaded. The area in front of them was packed with lines of tanks, artillery, personnel carriers, and thousands of troops waiting in neat, geometric groupings. "Chinese regular divisions embarking to be ferried up for the second wave now assembling in orbit," JEVEX announced.
The view changed again to show a similar scene, but this time set among thickly forested hills. "Conventional low-level supersonic bombers and high-altitude interceptors being loaded in Siberia."
And another view. "Missile batteries and antitank laser units embarking in the western U.S.A. There’re more coming in from all over. Contingency plans are being drawn up for a third wave."
Perspiration was showing on Broghuilio’s face. He closed his eyes, and his lips moved soundlessly as he struggled to remain calm. "Might I suggest, Excellency, that—" Wylott began, but Broghuilio cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.
"Quiet. I need time to think." Broghuilio brought his hand up to his chin and began tugging at his beard nervously. He clenched his other fist behind his back and paced to the far end of the War Room. Then he turned to face back again. "JEVEX."
"Excellency?"
"VISAR must have a link into the Terran communications net through the Thurien facility there. Get me a channel into it through VISAR. I want to talk to the President of the United States of America, the Soviet Premier, or anybody else in high authority that VISAR can get hold of. Do it immediately."
"How do you want me to play it?" VISAR asked in the Government Center at Thurios.
"We can’t let the plan bog down," Caldwell said. "Unconditional surrender has to be his only way out. Fix it so that he thinks he’s cut off from everybody except Verikoff."
Anxious and impatient, Broghuilio had started pacing again. Then JEVEX announced, "VISAR is denying the request. It has been directed to conform to Thurien policy, which is to dissociate itself from Terran-Jevlenese affairs."
Broghuilio’s legs almost buckled beneath him. "The Thuriens are transferring those warships here to wipe us out!" he shouted. "What kind of dissociation policy is that? Tell VISAR I insist."
"VISAR has instructed me to advise you, with respect, Excellency, to go to hell."
Broghuilio was too numbed with shock to react violently. "Then tell VISAR to connect me to Calazar again," he choked.
"VISAR refuses."
"Then connect VISAR through to me."
"VISAR has severed all connections. I am unable to obtain further responses."
Broghuilio had begun trembling with a mixture of rage and fear. He spun his head wildly from side to side, his eyes white and staring. "Verikoff is your only choice," Wylott said. "You have to accept the ultimatum."
"Never!" Broghuilio shouted. "I’ll never surrender my force intact. We still have two days. We can evacuate the entire officer corps, our scientists, our best engineers, and consolidate at Uttan. We will make our stand there. Uttan has permanent defenses that the Terrans will find themselves hard put to match. They will still have some surprises in store for them if they try to follow us there." He looked at Wylott. "Work out a schedule with JEVEX to evacuate the maximum of value from Jevlen in two days. Begin at once. Ignore all other tasks."
"I think we ought to try the switch," Hunt said, watching. "They’re just about ready."
"Are you really going to try that?" Shilohin asked from the Shapieron. She sounded skeptical. "It’s too illogical, surely."
"What do you think, Chris?" Caldwell asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"They have been conditioned to accept contradictions now," Danchekker said. "At this moment there is a good chance that they will be incapable of thinking sufficiently clearly to question it."
"And they are close to panic," Sobroskin observed from beside Hunt. "Panic and logic are impossible companions."
"I’m still not sure I understand this phenomenon you call panic," Eesyan said from the Shapieron.
"Let’s see if we can show you," Caldwell said, and gave an instruction to VISAR.
"Pardon, Excellency," JEVEX queried. "But your figure of two days appears irrelevant."
"What?" Broghuilio stopped dead in his tracks. "What do you mean, irrelevant?"
"I don’t understand why you have specified two days," JEVEX answered.
Broghuilio shook his head, nonplussed. "It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Terran attack will begin two days from now, will it not?"
"I don’t follow, Excellency."
Broghuilio sent a puzzled frown around the room. His aides stared back at him equally bemused. "The attack is due in two days, is it not?" he said again.
"There has been no postponement, Excellency. The attack is still expected today, twelve hours from now."
Nothing happened for a few seconds.
Then Broghuilio brought his hand up to his face and beat it slowly and deliberately several times against his brow. "JEVEX," he said. His voice was quiet as his effort to control himself over-compensated. "You have just told us that the first wave is only now in the process of leaving Earth."
"Pardon, Excellency, but I have no record of saying any such thing."
It was too much. Broghuilio’s voice began to rise and shake uncontrollably. "How can the Terrans be less than a day away?" he demanded. "Are they or are they not departing from Earth now?"
"They began departing from Earth two days ago," JEVEX replied. "They have entered Jevlenese planetary space and will commence their attack in twelve hours’ time."
Broghuilio’s color was deepening rapidly. "Those surveillance reports that you just presented. Were they or were they not live from Earth as of this moment, as you stated?"
"They were records obtained two days ago, as I stated."
"YOU DID NOT SAY THAT!" Broghuilio screamed.
"I did. My records confirm it. Shall I replay them?"
Broghuilio turned to appeal to the rest of the room. "You all heard it. What did that idiot machine say? Were those views live or were they not?" Nobody was listening. One of the aides was rushing back and forth and jabbering incoherently, another was clutching at his face and moaning, while among the rest consternation was breaking out on every side.
"They couldn’t be from two days ago."
"How do you know? How do you know what’s happening and what isn’t? How do you know anything?"
"JEVEX said so."
"It said the opposite too."
"Maybe JEVEX is mad."
"But JEVEX said—"
"JEVEX doesn’t know what it’s saying. We can’t trust anything."
"The Terrans are coming! They’re only hours away!"
On one side of the room the scientist, Estordu, quietly vanished. In the confusion, nobody noticed.
Broghuilio was waving his arms and shouting above the clamor. "Twelve hours! Twelve hours! And you tell me you have no weapons! They’ll be coming straight in for the kill because they don’t know what opposition to expect. . . . . AND WE HAVE NO OPPOSITION TO OFFER! A shipful of children could walk in and take us over, and the Terrans don’t even know it. And what do I have to stop them? Imbecile generals, imbecile scientists, and an imbecile computer!"
Wylott shouldered his way through to where Broghuilio was standing. "There is no choice," he insisted. "You have to accept Verikoff’s terms. At least that way there will come another day." Broghuilio turned his head and glowered, but the inevitability of what Wylott had said was written in his eyes. But still he could not bring himself to give the order. Wylott waited for a few seconds, then raised his head to call above the commotion still going on around them. "JEVEX. Call Earth via your own channel to Sverenssen. Get Verikoff on the line."
"At once, General," JEVEX acknowledged.
In the communications room in Connecticut, Hunt turned his head toward Verikoff, who was watching from the doorway. "You’d better come on in. It looks as if you’ll be on again in a few seconds to accept the surrender. It’s just about all over." Verikoff moved to the center of the room while the others fell back to clear a small circle around him. On the screen showing the Jevlenese War Room, Wylott and Broghuilio had turned to look directly out at the room and were waiting expectantly for JEVEX to make the connection. Verikoff folded his arms and assumed a domineering posture in readiness.
And suddenly the screen went blank.
Puzzled looks appeared all around the room. "VISAR?" Hunt said after a few seconds. "VISAR, what’s happened?" There was no reply. The screens that had been connecting them to Thurien and the Shapieron had gone blank as well.
Verikoff moved quickly over to a bank of equipment on one side of the room and ran rapidly through a sequence of tests. "It’s dead," he announced, looking up at the others. "The whole system is dead. We don’t have any channels to anywhere, and I can’t open any. Something has cut us off from JEVEX completely."
In the Government Center at Thurios, Caldwell was equally bewildered. "VISAR, what’s happened?" he demanded. "Where did the views from Earth and Jevlen go? Have you lost them or something?"
A few seconds went by, then VISAR answered. "It’s worse than that. I haven’t only lost Connecticut and the War Room, I’ve lost everything from JEVEX. I don’t have anything into it at all. The whole system has switched off."
"Don’t you know anything that’s happening at Jevlen at all?" Morizal asked, aghast.
"Nothing," VISAR said. "The only channel I’ve got to anywhere in the whole of the JEVEX-controlled world-system is the one through to the Shapieron. JEVEX seems to be dead. The whole system has just gone down."
Broghuilio found himself reclining in his private quarters deep underground in the complex that housed the Directorate of Strategic Planning. He sat up sharply, unsure of what had happened. A moment before he had been in the War Room with Wylott, waiting for a connection to Verikoff. Even as he remembered, he saw again in his mind’s eye the armada from Earth, at that moment sweeping inward toward Jevlen. He looked around wildly.
"JEVEX?"
No response.
"JEVEX, answer me."
Nothing.
Something cold and heavy turned over deep in his stomach. He leaped to his feet, fumbled his way into a robe to cover his shorts and undershirt, and hurried into the next room to check the status indicators of the suite’s monitor panel. Lighting, air conditioning, communications, services . . . everything had reverted to emergency backup mode. JEVEX was not operating. He tried activating the communications console, but the only thing he could raise on the screen was a message stating that all channels were saturated. It meant that the condition was general and not due simply to some local failure; the complex was in panic. He rushed through into his bedroom and began frantically tearing clothes out of a closet.
He was still buttoning his tunic when a tone sounded from the outside door in the hallway. Broghuilio hastened out and pressed his thumb against a printlock plate to dematerialize the door. Estordu was there with two other aides. The sounds of shouting and commotion came in from behind them.
"What’s happened?" Broghuilio demanded. "The whole system is dead."
"I deactivated it," Estordu told him. "I threw the manual override breakers in the master nucleus control room. I’ve shut JEVEX down totally."
Broghuilio’s beard quivered, and his eyes widened. "You what—" he began, but Estordu waved a hand impatiently to silence him. The gesture was so out of character that Broghuilio just stared.
"Can’t you see what’s happened?" Estordu said, speaking rapidly and urgently. "JEVEX was not functioning coherently. Something was affecting it from the inside. It could only have been VISAR. Somehow VISAR gained access to it. That meant that the Thuriens could have been watching every move we made. We still have twelve hours, and if we move quickly we can still get away. We still have emergency communications channels to Uttan, and the standby transfer system can project an entry port to Jevlen. With JEVEX inoperative and VISAR therefore blind, we can make our arrangements without risking interference from the Thuriens or the Terrans. The nearest Terran ships are still twelve hours away. By the time they get here we can be gone, and they’ll have no way of knowing where to. By the time they think of looking for us at Uttan, we will be well prepared. Don’t you see? It was the only way. With JEVEX running we couldn’t have planned a move without them knowing."
Broghuilio thought rapidly as he listened. There was no time for arguing, and anyway, Estordu was right. He nodded. "Everyone with their wits about them will go physically to the War Room," he said. He looked at Estordu. "Find Lantyar and tell him I want five reliable crews mustered and brought to Geerbaine by eighteen hundred hours today. You. . ." He directed his gaze at one of the two aides standing behind Estordu. "Contact the operations commander at Geerbaine and tell him I want five E-class transports ready for launch not one minute later than then, and power standing by on-line at Uttan to project ports as soon as the transports clear Jevlen." He gestured to the other aide. "And you, find General Wylott and tell him to mobilize four companies of guards and organize air transportation from here to Geerbaine, ready to leave by seventeen thirty hours. I’ll need capacity for two thousand persons. Commandeer it from wherever you need to, and don’t hesitate to use force. Do you understand?" Broghuilio straightened his collar and went back through to the bedroom to buckle on his belt and sidearm. "I am going to the War Room now," he called out to them. "The three of you will report to me there not later than one hour from now. Do as I say, and this time tomorrow we will all be on Uttan."

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Chapter Thirty-Six

The scene being presented inside the Jevlenese War Room was a view of the combined Terran battle fleet forming up as it moved from Earth. In the foreground a formation of destroyers, sleek, gray, and menacing, was moving into position to become part of an unfolding armada that extended away as far as the eye could see. As the first shrank into the distance to merge into the array, more formations slid majestically inward from the sides of the view and were absorbed in turn into the growing panorama. The first groups carried the Red Star of the Soviet Union, the next ones the Stars and Stripes of the U.S.A., and after those came the emblems of U.S. Europe, Canada, Australia, and the Republic of China. Farther away, moving slowly behind the vessels maneuvering and turning in the foreground, were lines of immense warships, their stark, solid contours broken by sinister weapon housings and ominous clusters of externally mounted missile pods. And behind them were the task groups and supply convoys—carriers, bombardment platforms, battle cruisers, interceptor mother ships, ground-suppression orbiters, shuttle launchers, troop and armor carriers, transports, all attended by swarms of support and escort craft—diminishing away to become pinpoints that seemed to be hardly moving at all against the stars. But appearances were deceiving. The whole awesome constellation was speeding silently and relentlessly away from Earth—toward the Ganymean transfer ports.
JEVEX’s comments came through on audio. "The first wave, moving out from its forming-up area near Luna. Measured acceleration is consistent with the arrival time that the Terrans have indicated."
Broghuilio turned a shade paler. "First wave?" he gasped. "There’s more?"
In response the scene changed to show a view looking down on what appeared to be a huge base of some kind, enclosed by a perimeter fence and surrounded by desolate, sandy terrain. Lines of dots along one side expanded rapidly as the view enlarged, and resolved themselves into rows of surface shuttles in the process of being loaded. The area in front of them was packed with lines of tanks, artillery, personnel carriers, and thousands of troops waiting in neat, geometric groupings. "Chinese regular divisions embarking to be ferried up for the second wave now assembling in orbit," JEVEX announced.
The view changed again to show a similar scene, but this time set among thickly forested hills. "Conventional low-level supersonic bombers and high-altitude interceptors being loaded in Siberia."
And another view. "Missile batteries and antitank laser units embarking in the western U.S.A. There’re more coming in from all over. Contingency plans are being drawn up for a third wave."
Perspiration was showing on Broghuilio’s face. He closed his eyes, and his lips moved soundlessly as he struggled to remain calm. "Might I suggest, Excellency, that—" Wylott began, but Broghuilio cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.
"Quiet. I need time to think." Broghuilio brought his hand up to his chin and began tugging at his beard nervously. He clenched his other fist behind his back and paced to the far end of the War Room. Then he turned to face back again. "JEVEX."
"Excellency?"
"VISAR must have a link into the Terran communications net through the Thurien facility there. Get me a channel into it through VISAR. I want to talk to the President of the United States of America, the Soviet Premier, or anybody else in high authority that VISAR can get hold of. Do it immediately."
"How do you want me to play it?" VISAR asked in the Government Center at Thurios.
"We can’t let the plan bog down," Caldwell said. "Unconditional surrender has to be his only way out. Fix it so that he thinks he’s cut off from everybody except Verikoff."
Anxious and impatient, Broghuilio had started pacing again. Then JEVEX announced, "VISAR is denying the request. It has been directed to conform to Thurien policy, which is to dissociate itself from Terran-Jevlenese affairs."
Broghuilio’s legs almost buckled beneath him. "The Thuriens are transferring those warships here to wipe us out!" he shouted. "What kind of dissociation policy is that? Tell VISAR I insist."
"VISAR has instructed me to advise you, with respect, Excellency, to go to hell."
Broghuilio was too numbed with shock to react violently. "Then tell VISAR to connect me to Calazar again," he choked.
"VISAR refuses."
"Then connect VISAR through to me."
"VISAR has severed all connections. I am unable to obtain further responses."
Broghuilio had begun trembling with a mixture of rage and fear. He spun his head wildly from side to side, his eyes white and staring. "Verikoff is your only choice," Wylott said. "You have to accept the ultimatum."
"Never!" Broghuilio shouted. "I’ll never surrender my force intact. We still have two days. We can evacuate the entire officer corps, our scientists, our best engineers, and consolidate at Uttan. We will make our stand there. Uttan has permanent defenses that the Terrans will find themselves hard put to match. They will still have some surprises in store for them if they try to follow us there." He looked at Wylott. "Work out a schedule with JEVEX to evacuate the maximum of value from Jevlen in two days. Begin at once. Ignore all other tasks."
"I think we ought to try the switch," Hunt said, watching. "They’re just about ready."
"Are you really going to try that?" Shilohin asked from the Shapieron. She sounded skeptical. "It’s too illogical, surely."
"What do you think, Chris?" Caldwell asked, glancing over his shoulder.
"They have been conditioned to accept contradictions now," Danchekker said. "At this moment there is a good chance that they will be incapable of thinking sufficiently clearly to question it."
"And they are close to panic," Sobroskin observed from beside Hunt. "Panic and logic are impossible companions."
"I’m still not sure I understand this phenomenon you call panic," Eesyan said from the Shapieron.
"Let’s see if we can show you," Caldwell said, and gave an instruction to VISAR.
"Pardon, Excellency," JEVEX queried. "But your figure of two days appears irrelevant."
"What?" Broghuilio stopped dead in his tracks. "What do you mean, irrelevant?"
"I don’t understand why you have specified two days," JEVEX answered.
Broghuilio shook his head, nonplussed. "It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Terran attack will begin two days from now, will it not?"
"I don’t follow, Excellency."
Broghuilio sent a puzzled frown around the room. His aides stared back at him equally bemused. "The attack is due in two days, is it not?" he said again.
"There has been no postponement, Excellency. The attack is still expected today, twelve hours from now."
Nothing happened for a few seconds.
Then Broghuilio brought his hand up to his face and beat it slowly and deliberately several times against his brow. "JEVEX," he said. His voice was quiet as his effort to control himself over-compensated. "You have just told us that the first wave is only now in the process of leaving Earth."
"Pardon, Excellency, but I have no record of saying any such thing."
It was too much. Broghuilio’s voice began to rise and shake uncontrollably. "How can the Terrans be less than a day away?" he demanded. "Are they or are they not departing from Earth now?"
"They began departing from Earth two days ago," JEVEX replied. "They have entered Jevlenese planetary space and will commence their attack in twelve hours’ time."
Broghuilio’s color was deepening rapidly. "Those surveillance reports that you just presented. Were they or were they not live from Earth as of this moment, as you stated?"
"They were records obtained two days ago, as I stated."
"YOU DID NOT SAY THAT!" Broghuilio screamed.
"I did. My records confirm it. Shall I replay them?"
Broghuilio turned to appeal to the rest of the room. "You all heard it. What did that idiot machine say? Were those views live or were they not?" Nobody was listening. One of the aides was rushing back and forth and jabbering incoherently, another was clutching at his face and moaning, while among the rest consternation was breaking out on every side.
"They couldn’t be from two days ago."
"How do you know? How do you know what’s happening and what isn’t? How do you know anything?"
"JEVEX said so."
"It said the opposite too."
"Maybe JEVEX is mad."
"But JEVEX said—"
"JEVEX doesn’t know what it’s saying. We can’t trust anything."
"The Terrans are coming! They’re only hours away!"
On one side of the room the scientist, Estordu, quietly vanished. In the confusion, nobody noticed.
Broghuilio was waving his arms and shouting above the clamor. "Twelve hours! Twelve hours! And you tell me you have no weapons! They’ll be coming straight in for the kill because they don’t know what opposition to expect. . . . . AND WE HAVE NO OPPOSITION TO OFFER! A shipful of children could walk in and take us over, and the Terrans don’t even know it. And what do I have to stop them? Imbecile generals, imbecile scientists, and an imbecile computer!"
Wylott shouldered his way through to where Broghuilio was standing. "There is no choice," he insisted. "You have to accept Verikoff’s terms. At least that way there will come another day." Broghuilio turned his head and glowered, but the inevitability of what Wylott had said was written in his eyes. But still he could not bring himself to give the order. Wylott waited for a few seconds, then raised his head to call above the commotion still going on around them. "JEVEX. Call Earth via your own channel to Sverenssen. Get Verikoff on the line."
"At once, General," JEVEX acknowledged.
In the communications room in Connecticut, Hunt turned his head toward Verikoff, who was watching from the doorway. "You’d better come on in. It looks as if you’ll be on again in a few seconds to accept the surrender. It’s just about all over." Verikoff moved to the center of the room while the others fell back to clear a small circle around him. On the screen showing the Jevlenese War Room, Wylott and Broghuilio had turned to look directly out at the room and were waiting expectantly for JEVEX to make the connection. Verikoff folded his arms and assumed a domineering posture in readiness.
And suddenly the screen went blank.
Puzzled looks appeared all around the room. "VISAR?" Hunt said after a few seconds. "VISAR, what’s happened?" There was no reply. The screens that had been connecting them to Thurien and the Shapieron had gone blank as well.
Verikoff moved quickly over to a bank of equipment on one side of the room and ran rapidly through a sequence of tests. "It’s dead," he announced, looking up at the others. "The whole system is dead. We don’t have any channels to anywhere, and I can’t open any. Something has cut us off from JEVEX completely."
In the Government Center at Thurios, Caldwell was equally bewildered. "VISAR, what’s happened?" he demanded. "Where did the views from Earth and Jevlen go? Have you lost them or something?"
A few seconds went by, then VISAR answered. "It’s worse than that. I haven’t only lost Connecticut and the War Room, I’ve lost everything from JEVEX. I don’t have anything into it at all. The whole system has switched off."
"Don’t you know anything that’s happening at Jevlen at all?" Morizal asked, aghast.
"Nothing," VISAR said. "The only channel I’ve got to anywhere in the whole of the JEVEX-controlled world-system is the one through to the Shapieron. JEVEX seems to be dead. The whole system has just gone down."
Broghuilio found himself reclining in his private quarters deep underground in the complex that housed the Directorate of Strategic Planning. He sat up sharply, unsure of what had happened. A moment before he had been in the War Room with Wylott, waiting for a connection to Verikoff. Even as he remembered, he saw again in his mind’s eye the armada from Earth, at that moment sweeping inward toward Jevlen. He looked around wildly.
"JEVEX?"
No response.
"JEVEX, answer me."
Nothing.
Something cold and heavy turned over deep in his stomach. He leaped to his feet, fumbled his way into a robe to cover his shorts and undershirt, and hurried into the next room to check the status indicators of the suite’s monitor panel. Lighting, air conditioning, communications, services . . . everything had reverted to emergency backup mode. JEVEX was not operating. He tried activating the communications console, but the only thing he could raise on the screen was a message stating that all channels were saturated. It meant that the condition was general and not due simply to some local failure; the complex was in panic. He rushed through into his bedroom and began frantically tearing clothes out of a closet.
He was still buttoning his tunic when a tone sounded from the outside door in the hallway. Broghuilio hastened out and pressed his thumb against a printlock plate to dematerialize the door. Estordu was there with two other aides. The sounds of shouting and commotion came in from behind them.
"What’s happened?" Broghuilio demanded. "The whole system is dead."
"I deactivated it," Estordu told him. "I threw the manual override breakers in the master nucleus control room. I’ve shut JEVEX down totally."
Broghuilio’s beard quivered, and his eyes widened. "You what—" he began, but Estordu waved a hand impatiently to silence him. The gesture was so out of character that Broghuilio just stared.
"Can’t you see what’s happened?" Estordu said, speaking rapidly and urgently. "JEVEX was not functioning coherently. Something was affecting it from the inside. It could only have been VISAR. Somehow VISAR gained access to it. That meant that the Thuriens could have been watching every move we made. We still have twelve hours, and if we move quickly we can still get away. We still have emergency communications channels to Uttan, and the standby transfer system can project an entry port to Jevlen. With JEVEX inoperative and VISAR therefore blind, we can make our arrangements without risking interference from the Thuriens or the Terrans. The nearest Terran ships are still twelve hours away. By the time they get here we can be gone, and they’ll have no way of knowing where to. By the time they think of looking for us at Uttan, we will be well prepared. Don’t you see? It was the only way. With JEVEX running we couldn’t have planned a move without them knowing."
Broghuilio thought rapidly as he listened. There was no time for arguing, and anyway, Estordu was right. He nodded. "Everyone with their wits about them will go physically to the War Room," he said. He looked at Estordu. "Find Lantyar and tell him I want five reliable crews mustered and brought to Geerbaine by eighteen hundred hours today. You. . ." He directed his gaze at one of the two aides standing behind Estordu. "Contact the operations commander at Geerbaine and tell him I want five E-class transports ready for launch not one minute later than then, and power standing by on-line at Uttan to project ports as soon as the transports clear Jevlen." He gestured to the other aide. "And you, find General Wylott and tell him to mobilize four companies of guards and organize air transportation from here to Geerbaine, ready to leave by seventeen thirty hours. I’ll need capacity for two thousand persons. Commandeer it from wherever you need to, and don’t hesitate to use force. Do you understand?" Broghuilio straightened his collar and went back through to the bedroom to buckle on his belt and sidearm. "I am going to the War Room now," he called out to them. "The three of you will report to me there not later than one hour from now. Do as I say, and this time tomorrow we will all be on Uttan."

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