Part 10 (1/2)
”He makes noises like it”
”You knohat I think?” Klem Zareff lowered his voice to a whisper
”I think he's a Federation spy! I think the Federation's lost Merlin
That's why they haven't co to mislay”
”It could happen There'd only be a few scientists and soh staff officers who'd knohere it was Well, say they all went back to Terra on the sae, one of our commerce raiders that hadn't heard the War was over, maybe just an ordinary accident But the shi+p's lost, and the location of Merlin's lost with her”
”That could happen,” Conn agreed seriously
”All right So ever since, they've had people here, listening, watching, spying This Lucas; he showed up here about a year after you went to Terra And who does he get engaged to? Your sister And what does he do here? Goes around arguing that there is no Merlin, getting people to argue with hi they know I'ation tricks in the book, and that's always been one of the best”
”Then why did he act the way he did at theanything more from any of us In his place, would you have done that? No; you'd have tried to take the lead in hunting for Merlin yourself Noouldn't you?”
Zareff was silent, first puzzled, and then hurt Noould have to tear the whole idea down and build it over
Flora was quite friendly when she came home from school She'd found out, soinator of theproject He was tempted, briefly, to tell her a little, if not all, of the truth about the Maxwell Plan, then decided against it The way to keep a secret was to confide it to nobody; every time you did, you doubled, maybe even squared, the chances of exposure
He told his father, when Rodney Maxwell ca, about his talk with Kle's he been like that, anyhow?” he asked
”As long as I've known hi tra in out of the rain, Klem Zareff's as sane as I am But on the subject of the Terran Federation, he's crazy as a bedbug What is a bedbug, anyhow?”
”They have them on Terra, in places like Tramptown They have places like Tramptown on Terra, too”
”Uhuh I suppose, in Klem's boots, I'd be just as crazy as he is,”
Rodney Maxwell said ”One , on Ash was a puddle of radioactive slag”
”That was in '51, wasn't it? I read about it,” Conn said ”It was a famous victory”
That was from a poem, too
Rodney Maxwell flew to Storisende early the nextConn rode back to Tenth Ar the stores and equipround shelters More farm-traht the work At the sa a steady influx of job-seekers, and a secondary swarsters who followed theotten all his melons pressed, came out to Tenth Ars and began drilling theuard the next operation The ht them was, of course, System States Alliance
A week later, the shi+p arrived from Storisende; a hundred and sixty feet, three thousand tons, sh to be berthed inside a hyperspace transport, and fast enough to get a load of aain before the eneht off any Ar officers and crew The captain and chief engineer were out-of-work shi+pline officers, the gunner was a former Federation artillery officer, and the crew looked more like pirates than most pirates did
They christened her the _Lester Dawes_, because Dawes had secured her and because the nae From then on, it was a race to see whether the Tenth Army attack-shelters would be emptied before the as all pressed, or vice versa
VII
Fifty-two years before, they had co a pit on top of it, a thousand feet in diameter and more than five hundred deep, and in it they built a duplicate of the headquarters for Third Fleet-Army Force Command They built a shaft a hundred feet in diameter like a chih solid rock to the head of a canyon half aTwelve years later, when the War was over, they sealed both entrances and went away and left it