The Shapieron had moved closer to Jevlen to await the arrival of the Ganymean ships from Thurien, which had begun moving inward from the edge of the planetary system but were still many hours away. The main screen on the Command Deck was showing views of Jevlen’s surface being sent back from probes at lower altitudes. The planet seemed to be in chaos. Nothing was flying anywhere, but in many places people had begun leaving the cities on foot and in disorderly streams of ground vehicles that had soon jammed solid on highway systems never intended for more than minor local or recreational traffic. Disturbances and rioting had broken out in a few places, but in most the populations were merely assembling in the open spaces, leaderless and bewildered. Communications traffic from the surface was garbled and revealed no organization for maintaining order or vital services. In short, the Ganymeans were going to have a big job on their hands putting the pieces of the mess together again.
Garuth was tense and apprehensive as he stood in the center of the Command Deck taking in the reports. VISAR had not crashed JEVEX, so the culprit had to have been the Jevlenese themselves. Somehow they had discovered they were the unwitting objects of surveillance through JEVEX, and had shut down the system to blind VISAR to what they were doing. In other words they were up to something, and there was no way of knowing what. Garuth didn’t like it.
The other thing that was bothering him at a deeper level was the feeling that he had failed. Despite the reassurances of Eesyan, Shilohin, Monchar, and the others that his bringing the Shapieron to Jevlen had saved Thurien, Garuth was acutely conscious of how near to disaster he had brought them, and that only the fast action of Hunt and the others on Earth had saved things. He had risked his crew and Eesyan’s scientists irresponsibly, and others had bailed him out. Yes, the threat to Thurien had been removed; but Garuth didn’t feel he deserved very much credit for that. He would have liked to have contributed more and the congratulations that had poured through from Thurien had only added to his discomfort.
On a smaller screen to one side, Hunt was talking over his shoulder to the others who were crowded into the room in the Connecticut house that had been the headquarters of the Jevlenese operation to infiltrate Earth. "Can you imagine the problems we might have created for lots of people on this planet in years to come?"
"What do you mean?" the voice of Norman Pacey, the American government representative, asked from somewhere in the background.
Hunt half turned to wave at the screen in front of him. "One day people might be sending their kids to college on Thurien. Suppose the kids figure out this stunt for themselves and start calling home collect."
After JEVEX had gone off the air and shut down the communications facility, the group in Connecticut had reestablished contact by the simple expedient of telephoning the control room at McClusky and linking back into VISAR via the databeam to the perceptron. They had called on two lines from the datagrid terminals in Sverenssen’s office, next door to the communications room, and had one screen to the Shapieron and another to the Government Center at Thurios.
"I still don’t believe it," the CIA official, Benson, said from a chair by a window, partly visible over Hunt’s shoulder. "When I see somebody picking up the phone and calling talking computers in an alien spaceship out at some other star, I don’t believe it." Benson turned his head to address somebody offscreen. "Jeez! The CIA should have had something like this years ago. We could even have tuned into what you guys were talking about in the men’s room inside the Kremlin."
"I think the days of that kind of thing will very soon be over, my friend," a voice replied from somewhere in an accent that Garuth assumed was Russian.
It would have made no difference if they were physically present in the Shapieron, he thought to himself. They would banter and laugh in the same way whatever the risks and whatever the unknowns. They could try, fail, forget, laugh, and try again—and probably succeed. The thought that they had been within a hair’s-breadth of disaster didn’t trouble them. They had won the round, now it was dismissed and in the past, and their only thoughts now were for the next. Sometimes Garuth envied Earthmen.
ZORAC spoke suddenly. Its tone was urgent. "Attention please. There is a new development. Probe Four has detected ships rising fast from the surface on the far side of Jevlen—five of them in tight formation." At the same instant the view on the main screen changed to show the curving, cloud-blotched surface of the planet with five dots creeping across the mottled background.
On the auxiliary screen Hunt was leaning forward while others crowded behind him. They had stopped talking. An adjacent screen showed Calazar and the observers at Thurios, all equally tense.
"It has to be Broghuilio and his staff," Calazar said after a few seconds. "They must be making a break for Uttan. Estordu said they’ve got a standby transfer system that operates between Jevlen and Uttan. That’s what they’ve been planning! We should have thought of it."
Eesyan had joined Garuth in the center of the Command Deck. Shilohin, Monchar, and some of the scientists were gathering around from the sides of the room. "They have to be stopped," Eesyan said, sounding worried. "They could have Uttan prepared and defended as a failback base. If they reach it and regroup, they could decide to fight it out. It would only be a matter of time before they realized that we don’t have anything to challenge them with. With Uttan in their hands, we’d be in real trouble."
"What is Uttan?" Hunt asked from the screen.
Eesyan turned away from Garuth and answered in a faraway voice as he tried to think. "An airless, waterless ball of rock on the fringe of Jevlenese space, but very rich in metals. The Jevlenese were granted it long ago as a source of raw materials to build up their industries. It’s obviously where their weapons came from. But if what we suspect is right, they’ve turned the whole planet into a fortified armaments factory. We’ve got to prevent Broghuilio’s getting there."
While Eesyan was speaking to Hunt, Garuth quickly reviewed what he could recollect of the Thurien h-transfer system. VISAR or JEVEX could jam h-beams projected into their respective regions of space by virtue of the dense networks of sensors they possessed, which enabled them to monitor the field parameters of a transfer toroid just beginning to form, and disrupt the energy flow through from h-space. Without the sensors, jamming wouldn’t work. But the only sensors that existed in the vicinity of Jevlen were JEVEX’s and VISAR would not be able to use them since it could only do so through JEVEX, and JEVEX was dead. Hence a beam from Uttan couldn’t be disrupted by VISAR. So that was why the Jevlenese had shut down the system.
"There’s nothing we can do," Calazar was saying from the other screen. "We haven’t got anything near there. Our ships are still eight hours away at least."
An agonized silence fell on the Command Deck. Calazar was looking helplessly from one side to another about him, while to one side of him Hunt and the Terrans on Earth had frozen into immobility. On the main screen the five Jevlenese vessels had cleared the edge of the planet’s disk.
A feeling of composure and confidence that he had not known for a long time flowed slowly into Garuth’s veins as the situation unfolded in sudden crystal clarity. There was no doubt about what he had to do. He was himself again, in control of himself and in command of his ship. "We are right here."
Eesyan stared for a second, then turned his head to gaze uncertainly at the five dots on the main screen, now diminishing rapidly into the starry background of space. "Could we catch them?" he asked dubiously.
Garuth smiled grimly. "Those are just Jevlenese planetary transports," he said. "Have you forgotten? The Shapieron was built as a starship." Without waiting for a response from Calazar, he raised his head and called in a louder voice, "ZORAC, dispatch Probe Four in pursuit immediately, recover deployed probes, lift the ship into high orbit, charge all on-board probes for maximum range, and bring the main drives up to full-power readiness. We’re going after them."
"And what will you do then?" Calazar asked.
"Worry about that later," Garuth replied. "The first thing is not to lose them."
"Tally ho!" ZORAC cried, mimicking a flawless English accent.
Hunt sat up and blinked in astonishment on one of the screens. "Where the hell did it pick that up?" he asked.
"Documentaries of World War II British fighter pilots," ZORAC announced. "That was for your benefit, Vic. I thought you’d appreciate it."