"Wait," said Cletus.
"Here?" said Mondar. "With Dow, according to your estimate, gathering his best troops to strike? I'm surprised you left the Dorsai to come here in the first place."
"No need to be surprised," said Cletus. "You know I know that the Exotics somehow seem to get information of events on other worlds faster than the fastest spaceship can bring it. It merely seemed to me that information might reach me as fast here as it would any place. Would you say I was wrong?"
Mondar smiled slightly. "No," he answered. "I'd have to say you weren't wrong. Be my guest, then, while you wait."
"Thank you," said Cletus.
Mondar's guest, then, he remained - for three days during which he inspected the Dorsai troops in Bakhalla, browsed in the local library that had been the scene of Bill Athyer's discovery of a new occupation life and renewed his old acquaintance with Wefer Linet.
On the morning of the fourth day, as he and Mondar were having breakfast together, a young Exotic in a green robe brought in a paper, which he handed to Mondar without a word. Mondar glanced at it and passed it over to Cletus.
"Dow and fifteen shiploads of Coalition elite troops," Mondar said, "landed on the Dorsai two days ago. They've occupied the planet."
Cletus got to his feet.
"What now?" Mondar looked up at him from the table. "There's nothing you can do now. Without the Dorsai, what have you got?"
"What did I have before I had the Dorsai?" retorted Cletus. "It's not the Dorsai Dow wants, Mondar, it's me. And as long as I'm able to operate, he hasn't won. I'll be leaving for the Dorsai immediately." Mondar got to his feet. "I'll go with you," he said.
26
The shuttleboat, with the Exotic sunburst emblem inlaid on its metal side, was allowed to land without protest on the Dorsai at the Foralie shuttleboat pad. But on emerging with Mondar, Cletus was immediately disarmed of his sidearm by competent-looking and obviously veteran troops in Coalition uniforms, with the white band of the Alliance-Coalition Joint Force fastened about their right sleeves. The same soldiers escorted the three men through a Foralie town where none of the local people were to be seen - only the occupying soldiers - to a military atmosphere craft that flew them up to Grahame House.
Word of their arrival had obviously been sent ahead. They were escorted to the door of the main lounge of the house, ushered inside and the door closed firmly behind them. Within, seated with drinks in which they obviously had little interest, were Melissa and Eachan, in their stiffness and unnaturalness, like set pieces arranged to show off Dow deCastries, slim in the gray-white Coalition uniform, standing beside the bar at the far end of the room with a drink also in his hand.
Across the room, Swahili, also in Coalition uniform, stood holding a heavy energy handgun.
"Hello, Cletus," Dow said. "I was expecting to find you here when I landed. I'm surprised you came on in when you saw my transports in orbit. Or didn't you think we'd have occupied all of the Dorsai yet?"
"I knew you had," said Cletus.
"But you came in anyway? I wouldn't have," said Dow. He raised his drink and sipped from it. "Or did you come down to trade yourself if I'd turn the Dorsai loose? If you did, that was foolish. I'm going to turn it loose anyway. All you've done is save me the trouble of hunting you down on some other world. I've got to take you back to Earth, you know."
"To be sure," said Cletus. "So I can have a trial - which will end in a death sentence. Which you can commute to life imprisonment - after which I'll be imprisoned secretly somewhere, and eventually just disappear."
"Exactly right," said Dow.
Cletus looked at the watch on his wrist. "How long is it since your scanning screens picked up the approach of the spaceship I came in?" he asked.
"About six hours." Dow put his drink down and straightened up. "Don't tell me you came in here expecting to be rescued? Maybe the handful of officers you left here do have a screen that picked your ship up, and maybe they did know it was you aboard her. But Cletus, we've been chasing them twenty-four hours a day since I brought my troops in here. They're too busy running to worry about you, even if they had enough men and guns to do something."
He stared at Cletus for a second. "All the same," he said, turning to Swahili, "we won't take any chances. Go give the local commander my orders to set up a security cordon to the shuttleboat landing pad in Foralie. And order a shuttle down from one of the transports. We'll get Grahame aboard as soon as possible." He looked back at Cletus. "I'm not going to start underestimating you now."
Swahili went out, handing his weapon to Dow and closing the door carefully behind him.
"You've never stopped underestimating me," said Cletus. "That's what brought you here."
Dow smiled.
"No. What I'm saying is quite true," said Cletus. "I needed a lever to change history and I picked you. From the time I sat down at your table on the ship to Kultis, I was busy working you into this situation."
Dow leaned the elbow holding the heavy handgun on the bar beside him, keeping its muzzle pointed steadily at Cletus.
"Move a few feet away from him, Mondar," Dow said to the Exotic, who had been standing beside and a little behind Cletus all this time. "I can't imagine you sacrificing yourself to give him a chance to escape, but there's no point in risking it."
Mondar moved.
"Go on, Cletus," said Dow. "We've got a few moments to wait anyway. I don't believe what you're saying at all, but if there's even a slight chance you've been able to maneuver me, I want to know about it."
"There's not much to tell," said Cletus. "I started out first by attracting your attention to myself. Then I showed you I had military genius. Then I began to make a name for myself on all the new worlds, knowing this would suggest an idea to you - the idea you could use what I was doing as an excuse to get what you wanted for yourself."
"And what was that?" The gun in Dow's hand was steady.
"Personal control of both the Alliance and the Coalition - and through them the new worlds," answered Cletus. "You talked up my successes on the new worlds as a threat to both the Alliance and the Coalition, until they agreed to combine their outworld forces and put you in command of them. Once in command, you thought all you needed was to stretch the Dorsais out so thin you could defeat them. Then you'd capture me and use your popularity and military power to put military juntas in place of the political leaders at the head of both the Coalition and Alliance, back on Earth. Naturally, the generals you picked for the military juntas would be your men - and in time they'd be yielding up the government of all Earth to you."
Swahili came back into the room. Dow handed him the handgun and, carefully covering Cletus all the while, Swahili crossed once more to his position on the other side of the room.
"How long?" Dow asked him.
"Twenty minutes," Swahili answered. Dow looked thoughtfully back at Cletus.
"Maybe a trial would be too much of a risk after all - " He broke off.
There were shouts, and the sharp, chorused whistling of cone rifles outside the house, followed by the heavy sizzle of at least one energy weapon. Swahili ran toward the door of the room.
"No!" snapped Dow. Swahili checked and spun about. Dow pointed at Cletus. "Shoot him!"
Swahili brought the energy handgun up and there was a sound like the snapping of a small stick. Swahili checked abruptly, turning toward Eachan, who was still sitting in his chair, but now holding the same flat little handgun - minus the long sniper's barrel - that he had used long ago from under the overturned command car in which he, with Melissa, Mondar and Cletus, had been trapped on the road to Bakhalla.