Jeamus shook his head. "It can't happen," he said. "The laws of phase-shift physics haven't don't permit it. I don't know how much you know about it, I don't quite understand-"
- "Never mind," said Hal. "You've said you could build it. That's all I need to hear. Now, the next question. How fast can you get it done?"
Jeamus stared at him again. "You're talking about a crash program?" he said. "Like the building of the shield - wall around Earth?" "Or faster," said Hal.
Jeamus breathed out sharply and almost angrily through his teeth. "I don't understand any of this," he said. "Can you at least tell me - has it got something to do with Tam?" "Yes," said Hal, "but it goes far beyond that." "All right," said Jeamus. "We'll build it for you. There's nothing tricky about the technics of it. Will a matter of hours suit you? A chunk more hours than it took to clear this corridor for you, of course." "As soon as you can," said Hal. "For Tam's sake."
Jeamus looked at him. "Tam?" "Tam," said Hal. Jeamus took a deep breath. "As soon as it can be done, it'll be done," he said. "I'll call you. "
Hal got up. "I'll be in my quarters", he said. He headed back to his quarters, but was hardly back into the corridor containing his door when the transmitted voice of Rukh spoke in his ear. "Hal, could you come to the office? Amanda's already here, and the Dorsai Commander-in-Chief."
Hal went. He found them as Rukh had said. Rukh herself was in a float behind the desk and Amanda in one of the padded armchair floats facing it. In another such overstuffed float, placed so that his face could see and be seen by both women was Rourke di Facino, wearing a blue uniform with a single gold strip slantwise across each lapel of the jacket, and a gray scarf underneath, over the collar of the white shirt underneath.
Hal had not seen the little man since he had spoken to most of the Grey Captains of the Dorsai, those who by local agreement spoke for their immediate area of that world, and that had been before the Dorsai had agreed to come and take over the defense of Earth. Hal, in fact had not kept track of who the commanding officer of all the Dorsai in the ships patrolling inside the phase-shield had been. Now, Perversely, he was glad that it was Rourke the other Dorsai had elected to this Post.- The sharptongued, sharp-eyed di Facino was oddly reassuring, with his invariable certainty that there was a right way to do everything.
"Good, you came right away," said Rukh, as Hal took one of the floats. "We've just had a disturbing incident. Fifty of the Younger Worlds' warships just made a simultaneous jump through the phase-shield in formation. We lost two of our own ships and had eight crippled, knocking them out of our own space or forcing them down to surface, where they were captured -"
"The damaged ships'll be back on patrol in a week," said di Facino. His light tenor voice was incisive to the point of abrasiveness. "But the two that were killed were lost with - yone aboard them. We can't afford losses - "
"I'll assume," said Rukh, "there weren't any of the newly trained people up from Earth among them?"
Di Facino shook his head. "All Dorsai." "I thought," Rukh went on, "the program to train new crews had been going faster than that. I keep getting word from below that the recruitment centers are jammed." "They are," said di Facino, "but without training, the men and women jamming them are useless. To operate a space war vessel's one thing, to fight it, something else entirely. Even our own people are rusty - It's not the way it was a hundred years ago when there was still war in space between the worlds and actual ship fighting was part of many of the contracts our people were drilled and have the then signing. Still, our people, at least, are then needed - the attitude . They'll do the right thing. are each one of them question marks all we get from Earth d in action - and in spite of they've actually been tested only a handful axe on ships so in the recruitment centers, sets tone ready to crew the new vessels for navy training, " "
Could fifty ships destroy the Final Encyclopedia asked Rukh. "they couldn't," answered Rukh "In fact, Jeamus "I'm told Walters' answer to me when I asked him that was that it'd almost be easier for them to destroy Earth. He tells me that they couldn't even pull the suicidal trick of jumping a ship through the Final Encyclopedia's own protective shield, to cause a matter explosion when it reconstituted itself inside the Encyclopedia, on the obvious basis that two solid objects can't occupy the same space at the same moment. It seems there's a shunt mechanism in the Encyclopedia's own phase-defenses that would cause a ship trying any such thing to keep shuttling forever back and forth between the Encyclopedia's inner and outer shield, and never reconstituting." "Why didn't they build that same mechanism into the Earth shield when they were at it?" di Facino asked. "The Earth shield is too big, apparently," said Rukh. "According to what Jeamus told me when I asked him that same question. There's a factor that keeps doubling, apparently, as the size of a phase-shield grows, so that only a little less than twice the size of the Encyclopedia is the practical limit for adding the shuttle effect." "Obviously, they'd have done it if they could have," said Amanda. "But suppose we concentrate on the important point, what this recent and apparently senseless attack means. Hal, you've been sitting there ever since you came in without saying a word, and you know Bleys Ahrens better than any of us. What's your opinion?" "I can't be much more sure than the rest of you," said Hal, "but my instinctive guess is, it's a message, that's all." "A message? To Earth?" said Rukh. "What would it be supposed to mean?" "I think " Hal hesitated "a message to me, from Bleys." "What message?" asked the little Dorsai-in-Chief. "That he meant what he said," Hal answered, "when he talked about the siege mentality and a blood bath on Earth when his forces were finally so overwhelming they'd be able to jump through simultaneously and overwhelm any defense we had. Amanda, did you tell them about what Bleys said when he came to the Chantry Guild?" "I was just about to when you got here," Amanda put in swiftly. "Bleys came and found us where we were on Kultis-" "Found you?" broke in Rukh. "And you got away safely?"
She was leaning forward tensely over the desk. "It wasn't like that," said Hal. "He came alone to a place where we were surrounded by friends. Also, I've told you before that Bleys is as aware as I am that either his killing me, or I, him, wouldn't change things, except possibly to work against the killer. The real opponents are two forces in the human race that have developed through history to this moment. He and I happen to be in point with." "That's a somewhat simplistics on the forces we're way of putting it," said Hal dryly, "You'll remember he did bring up the possibility of his killing you." "I was in no danger," said Hal. "About the message-,"asked di Facino. "You're, he promised you a blood bath if and when he finally broke through. I can see it. If it finally came to that. But why come to tell you, if this assault was supposed to send the same message?" "Because he also told me he didn't like blood baths, and I know him well enough to know he's telling the truth." "Telling the truth!" said di Facino. "He was trying to frighten you into something. A man can't be responsible for something like that and say he doesn't like doing it." "Have you ever cut off the leg of someone, without anesthetic, and knowing - as I suppose you don't - anything about such surgery. "No, I haven't!" snapped di Facino. "And you're right about my not knowing anything about how to go about it." "But you'd do your best in spite of that, if it was a case of a member of your immediate family and the only way to save that person's life was to cut, immediately, wouldn't you?"