He did so, leaving Dias and Bela with a touch of apprehension in the parting. They would be bullied, he thought, perhaps even accused of Marsh’s murder. He was about to be, perhaps.
Another means of breaking their resistance, only, he thought. He might be in Marsh’s place; he was the one separated from the others.
He was taken out of the office, brought among a squad of soldiers in the outer corridor, hastened farther and farther from the offices, from all the ordinary places, taken down in a lift, marched along another hall. He did not protest. If he stopped, they would carry him; there was no arguing with these mentalities, and he was too old to submit to being dragged down a hall.
It was the docks… the docks, crowded with military, squad upon squad of armed troops, and ships loading. “No,” he said, forgetting all his policy, but a rifle barrel slammed against his shoulders, and moved him on, across the ugly utilitarian decking, up to the ramp and umbilical which linked some ship to the dock. Inside, then; the air was, if anything, colder than it was on the docks.
They passed three corridors, a lift, numerous doors. The door at the end was open and lighted, and they brought him in, into the steel and plastic of shipboard furnishings, sloping shapes, chairs of ambiguous design, fixed benches, decks of far more obvious curve than those of the station, everything cramped and angles strange. He staggered, unused to the footing, looked in surprise at the man seated at the table.
Dayin Jacoby rose from a chair to welcome him.
“What’s going on?” he asked of Jacoby.
“I really don’t know,” Jacoby told him, and it seemed the truth. “I was roused out last night and brought aboard. I’ve been waiting in this place half an hour.”
“Who’s in charge here?” Ayres demanded of the mannequins. “Inform him I want to speak with him.”
They did nothing, only stood, rifles braced all at the same drill angle. Ayres slowly sat down, as Jacoby did. He was frightened. Perhaps Jacoby himself was. He lapsed into his long habit of silence, finding nothing to say to a traitor at any event. There was no polite conversation possible.
The ship moved, a crash echoing through the hull and the corridors and disturbing them from their calm. Soldiers reached for handholds as the moment of queasy null came on them. Freed of station’s grav, they had a moment yet to acquire their own, as ship’s systems took over. Clothes crawled unpleasantly, stomachs churned; they were convinced of imminent falling, and the falling when it came was a slow settling.
“We’ve left,” Jacoby muttered. “It’s come, then.”
Ayres said nothing, thinking in panic of Bela and Dias, left behind. Left.
A black-clad officer appeared in the doorway, and another behind him.
Azov.
“Dismissed,” Azov said to the mannequins, and they went out in silent order. Ayres and Jacoby rose at once.
“What’s going on?” Ayres asked directly. “What is this?”
“Citizen Ayres,” said Azov, “we are on defensive maneuvers.”
“My companions — what about them?”
“They are in a most secure place, Mr. Ayres. You’ve provided us the message we desired; it may prove of use, and therefore you’re with us. Your quarters are adjoining, just down that corridor. Kindly confine yourself there.”
“What’s happening?” he demanded, but the aide took him by the arm and escorted him to the door. He seized the frame and resisted, casting a look back at Azov. “What’s happening?”
“We are preparing,” Azov said, “to deliver Mazian your message. And it seems fit for you to be at hand… if further questions are raised. The attack is coming; I make my guess where, and that it will be a major one. Mazian doesn’t give up stations for nothing; and we’re going, Mr. Ayres, to put ourselves where he has obliged us to stand… up the wager, as it were. He’s left us no choice, and he knows it; but of course, it’s earnestly to be hoped that he will regard the authority you have to recall him. Should you wish to prepare a second, even more forceful message, facilities will be provided you.”
“To be edited by your experts.”
Azov smiled tautly. “Do you want the Fleet intact? Frankly I doubt you can recover it. I don’t think Mazian will regard your message; but as he finds himself deprived of bases, you may yet have a humanitarian role to fill.”
Ayres said nothing. He reckoned silence even now the wisest course. The aide took him by the arm and drew him back down the corridor, showed him into a barren compartment of plastic furniture, and locked the door.
He paced a time, what few paces the compartment allowed. In time he yielded to the weariness in his knees and sat down. He had managed badly, he thought Dias and Bela were… wherever they were — on a ship or still on the station, and what station they had been on he still did not know. Anything might happen. He sat shivering, suddenly realizing that they were lost, that soldiers and ships were aimed at Pell and Mazian… for Jacoby was brought along too. Another — humanitarian — function. In his own stupidity he had played to stay alive, to get home. It looked less and less likely. They were about to lose it all.
“A peace has been concluded,” he had said in the simple statement he had permitted to be recorded, lacking essential codes. “Security council representative Segust Ayres by authority of the Earth Company and the security council requests the Fleet make contact for negotiation.”
It was the worst of all times for major battle to be joined. Earth needed Mazian where he was, with all his ships, striking at random at Union, a nuisance, making it difficult for Union to extend its arm Earthward.
Mazian had gone mad… against Union’s vast extent, to launch the few ships he had, and to engage on a massive scale and lose. If the Fleet was wiped out, then Earth was suddenly out of the time he had come here to win. No Mazian, no Pell, and everything fell apart
And might not a message of the sort he had framed provoke some rash action, or confound maneuvers already in progress, lessening the chance of Mazian’s success even further?
He rose, paced again the bowed floor of what looked to be his final prison. A second message then. An outrageous demand. If Union was as self-convinced as the mannequins, as humorlessly convinced of their purpose, they might let it pass if it fit their demands.
“Considering merger of Company interest with Union in trade agreements,” he composed in his head. “Negotiations far advanced; as earnest of good faith in negotiations, cease all military operations; cease fire and accept truce. Stand by for further instructions.”
Treachery… to drive Mazian into retreat, into the kind of scattered resistance Earth needed at this stage. It was the only hope.
BOOK THREE
Chapter One
i
Norway moved as the Fleet moved, hurling their mass into realspace in synch. Com and scan flurried into action, searching for the mote which was giant Tibet, which had jumped in before them, advance guard, in this rout.
“Affirmative,” com sent to command with comforting swiftness. Tibet was where she was supposed to be, intact, probe untouched by any hostile activity. Ships were scattered about the system, commerce, quickly evaporating bluster from some self-claimed militia. Tibet had had one merchanter skip out in panic, and that was bad news. They needed no tale-bearers running to Union; but possibly that was the last place a merchanter wanted to head at the moment