“That’s good enough,” Phil said.
“All right,” Jackson went on, “now what did you mean by forcing us to take this chance? Let me make it plain. Colonel Thayer hasn’t been accused of collaborating in the Roye gun hoax, but he got a black eye out of the affair just the same. And don’t forget that a planet with colonial status is technically under martial law, which includes the civilians. If Silas Thayer can get his hands on the guilty persons, the situation will become a lot more unpleasant than it already is.”
* * *
Phil addressed Ronald Black, “Then how about you two? When you showed up here again on a transfer list, Thayer must have guessed why.”
Black shook his head. “Both of us exercised the privilege of changing our names just prior to the outtransfer. He doesn’t know we’re on Roye. We don’t intend to let him find out.”
Phil asked, “Did you make any arrangements to get out of Roye again?”
“Before leaving Earth?” Black showed his teeth in a humorless smile. “Boles, you have no idea of how abruptly and completely the government men cut us off from our every resource! We were given no opportunity to draw up plans to escape from exile, believe me.”
Phil glanced over at Celia. “In that case,” he said, a little thickly, “we’d better see if we can’t draw some up together immediately.”
Jackson asked, staring, “What are you talking about, Phil? Don’t think for a moment Silas Thayer isn’t doing what he can to find out who put that trick over on him. I’m not at all sure he doesn’t suspect me. And if he can tie it to us, it’s our neck. If you have some crazy idea of getting off the planet now, let me tell you that for the next few years we can’t risk making a single move! If we stay quiet, we’re safe. We—”
“I don’t think we’d be safe,” Phil said.
On his right, Celia Adams added sharply, “The gentleman in the other car who’s just started to lower that window had better raise it again! If he’s got good eyesight, he’ll see I have a gun pointed at him. Yes, that’s much better! Go on, Phil.”
“Have you both gone out of your minds?” Jackson demanded.
“No,” Celia said. She laughed with a sudden shakiness in her tone, added, “Though I don’t know why we haven’t! We’ve thought of the possibility that the rest of you might feel it would be better if Phil and I weren’t around any more, Wayne.”
“That’s nonsense!” Jackson said.
“Maybe. Anyway, don’t try it. You wouldn’t be doing yourselves a favor even if it worked. Better listen now.”
“Listen to what?” Jackson demanded exasperatedly. “I’m telling you it will be all right, if we just don’t make any mistakes. The only real pieces of evidence were your duplicator and the original gun. Since we’re rid of those—”
“We’re not rid of the gun, Wayne,” Phil said. “I still have it. I haven’t dared get rid of it.”
“You . . . what do you mean?”
“I was with Beulah in the Fort Roye hospital when she died,” Phil said. He added to Ronald Black, “That was two days after the ship brought the seven of you in.”
Black nodded, his eyes alert. “Major Jackson informed me.”
“She was very weak, of course, but quite lucid,” Phil went on. “She talked a good deal—reminiscing, and in a rather happy vein. She finally mentioned the Geest gun, and how Uncle William used to keep us boys . . . Wayne and me . . . spellbound with stories about the Gunderland Battle, and how he’d picked the gun up there.”
Jackson began, “And what does—”
“He didn’t get the gun there,” Phil said. “Beulah said Uncle William came in from Earth with the first shipment of settlers and was never off Roye again in his life.”
“He . . . then—”
Phil said, “Don’t you get it? He found the gun right here on Roye. Beulah thought it was awfully funny. William was an old fool, she said, but the best liar she’d ever known. He came in with the thing one day after he’d been traipsing around the back country, and said it looked `sort of’ like pictures of Geest guns he’d seen, and that he was going to put the inscription on it and have some fun now and then.” Phil took a deep breath. “Uncle William found it lying in a pile of ashes where someone had made camp a few days before. He figured it would have been a planetary speedster some rich sportsmen from Earth had brought in for a taste of outworld hunting on Roye, and that one of them had dumped the broken oddball gun into the fire to get rid of it.”
“That was thirty-six years ago. Beulah remembered it happened a year before I was born.”
There was silence for some seconds. Then Ronald Black said evenly, “And what do you conclude, Boles?”
Phil looked at him. “I’d conclude that Norm Vaughn was right about there having been some fairly intelligent creatures here once. The Geests ran into them and exterminated them as they usually do. That might have been a couple of centuries back. Then, thirty-six years ago, one of their scouts slipped in here without being spotted, found human beings on the planet, looked around a little and left again.”
He took the Geest gun from his pocket, hefted it in his hand. “We have the evidence here,” he said. “We had it all the time and didn’t know it.”
Ronald Black said dryly, “We may have the evidence. But we have no slightest proof at all now that that’s what it is.”
“I know it,” Phil said. “Now Beulah’s gone . . . well, we couldn’t even prove that William Boles never left the planet, for that matter. There weren’t any records to speak of being kept in the early days.” He was silent a moment. “Supposing,” he said, “we went ahead anyway. We hand the gun in, with the story I just told you—”
Jackson made a harsh, laughing sound. “That would hang us fast, Phil!”
“And nothing else?”
“Nothing else,” Black said with finality. “Why should anyone believe the story now? There are a hundred more likely ways in which a Geest gun could have got to Roye. The gun is tangible evidence of the hoax, but that’s all.”
Phil asked, “Does anybody, including the cautious gentlemen in the car over there . . . disagree with that?”
There was silence again. Phil shrugged, turned towards the cliff edge, drew his arm back and hurled the Geest gun far up and out above the sea. Still without speaking, the others turned their heads to watch it fall towards the water, then looked back at him.
“I didn’t think very much of that possibility myself,” Phil said unsteadily “But one of you might have. All right—we know the Geests know we’re here. But we won’t be able to convince anyone else of it. And, these last few years, the war seems to have been slowing down again. In the past, that’s always meant the Geests were preparing a big new surprise operation.”
“So the other thing now—the business of getting off Roye. It can’t be done unless some of you have made prior arrangements for it Earthside. If it had been possible in any other way, I’d have been out of this place ten years ago.”
Ronald Black said carefully, “Very unfortunately, Boles, no such arrangements have been made.”
“Then there it is,” Phil said. “I suppose you see now why I thought this group should get together. The ten masterminds! Well, we’ve hoaxed ourselves into a massive jam. Now let’s find out if there’s any possible way—any possibility at all!—of getting out of it again.”
A voice spoke tinnily from Jackson’s lapel communicator. “Major Jackson?”
“Yes?” Jackson said.
“Please persuade Miss Adams that it is no longer necessary to point her gun at this car. In view of the stated emergency, we feel we had better come out now—and join the conference.”
* * *
FROM THE RECORDS OF THETERRITORIAL OFFICE, 2345 A.D.
. . . It is generally acknowledged that the Campaign of the 132nd Segment marked the turning point of the Geest War. Following the retransfer of Colonel Silas Thayer to Earth, the inspired leadership of Major Wayne Jackson and his indefatigable and exceptionally able assistants, notably CLU President Boles, transformed the technically unfortified and thinly settled key world of Roye within twelve years into a virtual death trap for any invading force. Almost half of the Geest fleet which eventually arrived there was destroyed in the first week subsequent to the landing, and few of the remaining ships were sufficiently undamaged to be able to lift again. The enemy relief fleet, comprising an estimated forty per cent of the surviving Geest space power, was intercepted in the 134th Segment by the combined Earth forces under Admiral McKenna’s command and virtually annihilated.