Part 24 (1/2)

Yak.u.mo's hands waved briefly in the foreground on the screen. ”How can they know which centers to go for when it's as much as we can do to identify them with all our equipment? The only thing the Taloids could do is attack everything indiscriminately. But that would destroy the environment that also supports them.” Yak.u.mo looked out of the screen, waiting for a few seconds, but there was nothing more Zambendorf could add. Yak.u.mo went on. ”Inciting the Taloids into provoking the Asterians to retaliate would probably be the fastest way to make sure that the Taloids do get wiped out. But if we leave, then there's the possibility that they and the Asterians will find their own balance of compromise.”

”As master and slave,” Zambendorf said. ”Exactly what we were trying to save them from.”

Yak.u.mo gave a barely perceptible shrug. ”Maybe. But better than being exterminated. Slaves may one day be freed. I am sorry, Herr Zambendorf. I understand your sentiments, and I share them. But my duty is clear. The order stands. Evacuation of the surface must be completed in five days.”

Zambendorf stared down at his hands, hesitating for a moment, then looked back up at the screen.

”Just one more thing. I talked about this with my team, and we came to the conclusion that the governments on Earth would see one last option. Forget all the sophisticated computers and mission scheduling: stage a last-fling, seat-of-the-pants bid using theOrion. Load it up with all the nuclear weapons it can carry, send it back to take out everything on t.i.tan, and just hope that the Asterians don't come after us before it gets here. Is that what this evacuation is really all about? Is it what they've decided?”

Yak.u.mo remained expressionless. ”I only know my orders, Herr Zambendorf,” he replied. ”Of course, I must agree that the authorities are unlikely not to have considered such an option.”

Zambendorf left the communications section and made his way leadenly back to the mess area, where the rest of the team was gathered. His expression left no need for anyone to ask the outcome. But they had all expected as much.

”They're going to do it if they can,” Zambendorf said, sinking down onto one of the benches. ”An all-out strike from theOrion. Total obliteration of everything on the surface.”

”Everything?” Abaquaan repeated. ”You mean the Taloids as well? Genoa, Arthur and his guys, all of them?”

”Where else are they gonna be?” Clarissa said laconically.

Thelma shook her head in a way that said it was too much to accept. ”How can they?” she whispered. ”This whole thing here that's been evolving for a million years . . . an entire machinebiosphere that has culminated in intelligent life.”

”Not just intelligent life. Friends,” Abaquaan put in.

Thelma nodded. ”And it's unique. Nothing like it will ever happen again. How can we just . . . blow it out of existence?”

”Go and say it to Yak.u.mo,” Zambendorf replied. ”I just tried. He already knows all that. It doesn't make any difference.”

”It's the way they have to think,” Joe Fellburg said. ”It's survival. If the Asterians get out, it could all happen the other way around.”

Drew West pinched his lips dubiously. ”Couldn't they give some kind of ultimatum first-if theOrion did manage to get here before the Asterians had built any s.h.i.+ps? Couldn't they tune into the system again and say something like, 'Look, we're up here with all these bombs, and we can take you out. So let's talk and figure out some way of making this work for all of us'?” He looked around the group and gestured appealingly. ”h.e.l.l, we're talking about the whole solar system, guys. It's not as if we're short on room.”

”Our people wouldn't buy it,” Fellburg said. ”You've seen the Asterians' ideas of a deal. n.o.body's gonna trust 'em now.”

”Just flatten the whole works and be safe,” Thelma concluded cynically.

Clarissa raised her eyebrows resignedly behind her b.u.t.terfly spectacles. ”That's how they're gonna see it.”

”That's the business they're in,” Fellburg said.

A long silence dragged while they all pondered how to raise the one obvious thing remaining that was weighing on all their minds. Finally Drew West voiced it. ”We can't just go,” he said, looking around. ”Somehow we have to break it to Arthur.” Everyone looked at everyone else searchingly.

n.o.body immediately volunteered, but neither did anyone attempt any reason for dropping out.

”h.e.l.l, we'll all go,” Zambendorf said. Which decided the issue.

He called O'Flynn in vehicles maintenance. ”Mike, it's Karl here. Six of us want to go over to Arthur's. How are you fixed?”

”Ah, not too bad,” the Irish voice replied. ”It'll be murder tomorrow, when they start s.h.i.+pping everything and its brother from the remote sites, but we're all right for now. I can give you a small personnel transporter. Crew might be more of a problem, though, since Harold's got everyone on ch.o.r.es around the base. Could you drive it yourselves this time?”

Zambendorf looked inquiringly at Clarissa, the jet pilot. She returned a nod. ”No problem, Mike,”

Zambendorf reported.

”Okay, I'll have one ready for you in an hour, say. And six suits.”

”That would be fine,” Zambendorf said.

They met Arthur with the two Taloid brothers, Galileo and Moses, in the same ice chamber, with its odd pseudovegetable shapes and plastic and metal wall designs, that Zambendorf had come to with his previous message of rea.s.surance. The difference was that this time he had nothing rea.s.suring to say.

He explained-as best he could in view of the translation difficulties and the Taloids' lack of any concept of what went on inside their own heads or any other kind of computer-that ”spirit beings” from afar had invaded t.i.tan's forests and were taking over the reproductive machinery to create bodies in which they intended to a.s.sume a physical form.

The humans were using one of Weinerbaum's new, improved translator boxes that produced output in the form of transmissions to their suit radios. A visual indicator on the box showed that Moses was speaking. ”Explains death-quiet that has come. Spirits rule forests. I no longer hear forests' songs.”

Zambendorf frowned questioningly behind his faceplate, looking like a ghostly apparition in the light from a flashlamp on minimum beam, which to the Taloids was still like a floodlight.”The radio sources,” Thelma reminded him over the local intercom frequency. ”The Asterians blocked them after they got rid of GENIUS.”

”Oh, of course.” Zambendorf nodded and continued what he had been saying. The s.h.i.+p from Earth with its military expedition would not be coming, he said. A conflict over t.i.tan's resources would not be to the Taloids' benefit. So the Terrans were returning to Earth. The spirits were the true creators of the life that inhabited t.i.tan. They and the Taloids belonged there naturally and would learn to live together.

The Terrans did not. It was an essentially true account, even if sweetened a little to be palatable. There was a long pause before Arthur's response came through.

”All Terrans will leave t.i.tan?”

Zambendorf swallowed and nodded his head. ”Yes.”

”And not return. Other s.h.i.+p will not come back, not even without soldiers?”

Zambendorf didn't even want to think about that. ”Maybe in the future,” he whispered hoa.r.s.ely.

”There is much uncertainty.” Several of the Terran figures s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably.

”Will we meet Zambendorf and his friends again?” Arthur asked.

”It is very unlikely.”

The translator showed a different symbol to indicate that Galileo was speaking. ”What of learning and the sciences? We had just begun.”

”You will continue to learn,” Zambendorf said. He couldn't bring himself to tell them any more.

After all, there was a chance that things would work out as he was saying. The Asterians and the Taloids might manage to get along tolerably. Somight Terrans and Asterians, for that matter. It wasn't untrue to say that s.h.i.+ps from Earthcould return some day. Yak.u.mo hadn't actuallysaid that an all-out nuclear strike was being planned. It was pure conjecture on Zambendorf and the team's part. Although the number of times he was right in divining the intentions of others-especially when it came to logical, predictable minds like those of scientists, the military, and officialdom-was something that he didn't want to think about. And even if it was planned, that didn't mean that it would succeed or that there would still be any point to it three months from now, which was the time theOrion would need to make t.i.tan even if it departed immediately.

”That's all it needs, Karl.” West's voice said on a local channel. ”You don't have to spell out any more.”

”Yeah, what's the point?” Fellburg asked.

”It's not your decision, Karl,” Clarissa came in. ”We've paid our respects, which was what we came for. There's nothing more we can do.”

Kleippur had tried to follow the Wearer's explanation, but he was at a loss to understand why the Lumians seemed unable to combat these ”spirits.” It seemed all the more strange now that the Lumians who had wanted to reinstate Eskenderom had been thwarted once more, Kroaxia was solidly for Nogarech again, and all the nations of Robia were set to follow.