“Since it relates to yours, yes. Colonel, brace yourself. You’ve been guarding the members of the Emissary expedition. Are you ready to add a follow-up load of nonhumans?”
The effect was as powerful as Brodersen had hoped. (Otherwise he might have turned tail then and there and tried to convey his news to another spacecraft or two, an isolated asteroid base or two, before the watchships hunted him down-poor though the chances were that that would do any good.) Troxell’s doubts vanished. They had been feeble from the outset, for he had no grounds for suspecting that anybody outside the government and the Faraday crew had any intimation of the facts.
Still, Brodersen must work warily, though with unlimited brass. In effect, he, holding two pair, was seeking to bluff out a full house. Pretending to knowledge he did not possess, he must get it from Troxell under guise of Side 77
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
telling his own story.
As for that: After Emissary returned, the PC had planted an extra guard on the Phoebean T machine. A strange vessel did emerge. She was boarded and her crew made prisoners without resistance. Having already leased Chehalis’
well-equipped but idle exploratory ship, the PC took them and their essentials away for safekeeping. To forestall any speculations, Fry declared when he entered the Solar System that his destination was Vesta, and went spaceward of his true goal before doubling back toward it.
Troxell believed. No fool, he nevertheless was predisposed to believe.
Brodersen had anticipated that. The warders of the Wheel- twenty-one total, as he learned by feigning a slight misunderstanding -must be of more or less Actionist ideology. Else Quick, studying dossiers, doubtless getting depth-psych examinations made of volunteers “for a confidential assignment of utmost importance,” would not have picked them.
Soon Troxell was eager to talk. He needed to justify himself, he who had been penned in for these many weeks with his prisoners who were also his accusers. Brodersen listened patiently, encouragingly to all the antistellar theses. For a minute he was tempted to deny that the detention was proper, an act decided upon by the Council. But no. A few sentences can’t overturn a man’s faith.
Meanwhile his heart slammed, skin chilled and tingled, soul hallooed, behind a hard-held calm-for in between chunks of the lecture, he caught mentions of truth. The Emissary crew had been eight years at the far end of their gate.
They had lost three members. Carlos and Joelle were alive. They maintained the aliens were friendly and anxious to begin cultural exchange. They had an alien with them.
They had an alien with them.
Brodersen could hit on no safe way to find out what the creature looked like. He gathered that it could live under Terrestrial conditions, was of approximately human size, and claimed to be the sole representative its race would send unless mankind freely chose to establish relations- “And later they dispatched a ship of their own regardless, huh?” Troxell said. “How dumb do they suppose we are?”
“Well, they may have found reasons to change their minds,” Brodersen temporized. “It has to be investigated, and you’ve got the only people with experience of them.
“Besides, maybe more important, the Council has decided that we must have far better intelligence of them before we can allow anything to happen. I hope our arresting this group will drive the point home and we won’t need to take more drastic measures. You well realize, Colonel, we can’t have public hysteria either. Hence the secrecy.”
Time. “Yes, of course, Admiral Fry, no argument. Let’s discuss arrangements, shall we? What precautions have you in mind?”
-Eventually the conference ended.
Full Earth weight had resumed as Chinook drove onward. The Wheel had grown in sight enough to notice. When outside communication went on standby, the crew became free to load the intercom with jabber. Brodersen knew he must get them properly organized. The venture would be precarious at best.
He stood up, stretched and eased, stretched and eased, till the hardest knots were out of his muscles. Hell take hurry, he decided. Oh, I’ll brief them and drill them as well as I can. But that’s not awfully well; won’t fill more than an hour or two. First we should rest.