something else. They remained silent and avoided one another’s eyes
uncomfortably.
Then Massey turned his head suddenly to look somewhere offscreen. “There’s
somebody at the door here,” he said. “Just a second while I see who it is.” He
leaned away and vanished from sight for a few seconds, then reappeared once more
and announced, “It’s Thelma. I’ve let her in. She said something about having
important news.”
Zambendorf frowned and moved up to the screen. Drew West came back from the
forward end of the flight deck to stand next to him. In front of them, Massey
moved to one side to make room for Thelma. She looked worried. “Have you sent
Moses into Padua yet?” she asked without preliminaries.
Zambendorf nodded. “Yes—as scheduled. Why? What’s happened?”
Thelma groaned. “You can’t go through with it. Larry Campbell got me a copy of
the cargo manifest for the latest arms shipment down to Henry. Those missiles
are there, Karl. The list includes twenty-four Banshee Mark Fours, half with
training warheads and the rest of them live. They could blow you out of the sky
from up to eleven kilometers away. There’s no chance that going in there could
achieve anything now except get everyone down there killed. You have to call the
whole thing off.”
For a long time nobody moved and nobody spoke. Schwartz and Glautzen stared down
at the floor, while on the screen Thelma waited pale-faced and Massey kept his
eyes averted woodenly. At last, Zambendorf gave a single curt nod, turned away,
and stumbled unsteadily forward between the pilots’ stations. He sank down
heavily into the captain’s seat and sat staring out through the windshield with
unseeing eyes, his frame hunched and his shoulders sagging as if he had just
aged twenty years.
Drew West moved round to bring himself full-face to the image of Massey and
Thelma. “I think Karl sees the way it is,” he told them quietly. “Look, you’ve
done all you can for now. It’d probably be best if you left things with us for a
while. We’ll talk to you later, okay?”
Thelma was about to say something more, but Massey checked her with a warning
touch on the shoulder and shook his head. “Okay, Drew,” he murmured. “I guess it
was a good try, huh?” The screen went blank.
Abaquaan looked from one to another of the subdued faces around him. “What about
Nelson and the Druids outside?” he asked in a low voice. “They’re all ready for
the grand entry into Padua. What do we tell them?”
Nobody had any answers, or seemed to care all that much. At length West said,
“Well, perhaps that’s something we ought to talk about.” As the others looked at
him, he motioned with his head to indicate the direction of the door. Andy
Schwartz got the message and nodded silently; he got up from his seat, waved a
hand for Glautzen to do likewise, and followed Abaquaan, Clarissa, and the
others near the doorway through into the main cabin. Glautzen and West came
next, closing the door quietly behind them to leave Zambendorf alone and
unmoving, staring out into Titan’s perpetual night.
33
FRENNELECH, THE HIGH PRIEST OF KROAXIA, SAT ALONE IN HIS PRIVATE chambers in the
Palace of the High Holy One at Pergassos, brooding over the latest reports from
his spies. He smelt a conspiracy in the air, and the evidence pointed to
Eskenderom, the King, as being very much mixed up in it.
Eskenderom’s ambition had long been to sweep the other nations of the Sacred
Alliance aside and establish Kroaxia at the head of a mighty empire that would
stretch to the Peripheral Barrier, with himself as its leader. His preparatory
plans had involved political intrigues and subterfuges aimed at undermining the
kings and rulers of neighboring states and weakening their holds over their
realms; but in the case of Serethgin, the very destabilization that Eskenderom
had brought about had given Kleippur opportunity to seize control over the
province of Carthogia, and the resulting state of affairs had proved a hindrance
to the further development of Eskenderom’s scheme ever since.
Kroaxia’s acquisition of weapons from the Lumians, however, suddenly put