gerous; dangerous. He had to remember that.
“When?” he said. “I don’t know, Mike. The days were all
alike. It was toward the end, I think. When I was a kid I used
to hear them talk about us as if we were criminals, but I
couldn’t figure out why. I guessed that it was because we were
different, that’s all. It was only at the end that they began to
talk about specific crimes, and even then it didn’t make much
sense to me. My mother and I hadn’t ever pirated any ‘ships,
that was for sure.”
“Only at the last. That’s what I thought. They began to talk
like that for the first time when your power began to fail.
Isn’t that right?”
Sweeney gave that one a long think, at least ‘twice as long
as would ordinarily have been safe before Mike. He already
knew where Mike’s questions were leading him. In this in-
stance, a quick answer would be fatal. He had to appear to be
attempting, with some pain, to dredge up information which
was meaningless to him. After a while, he said:
“Yes, it was about then. I was beginning to cut down on
tapping their calls; it didn’t take much power, but we needed
all we bad. Maybe I missed hearing the important parts; that’s
possible.”
“No,” Mike said grimly. “I think you heard all of it. Or all
you were meant to hear. And I think you interpreted what you
heard in exactly the way they wanted you to, Don.”
“It could be,” Sweeney said slowly. “I was-only a kid. I
would have taken what I heard at face value. But that would
mean that they knew we were there. I wonder. I don’t remem-
ber exactly, but I don’t think we had begun to sneak power