communications set hidden in Arthur’s conference room at Camelot. One of
Arthur’s knights answered, and went to fetch Arthur. Zambendorf transmitted some
stills over the link from recordings showing Moses, but Arthur was unable either
to confirm or deny that the figure shown was Galileo’s brother. Galileo himself
was elsewhere, but Arthur promised to send for him at once. Galileo called back
over an hour later, after Arthur’s staff eventually found him locked away in a
workroom where he was constructing a model of the Satumian system of planet,
rings, and moons from information that Massey and Thelma had sent him several
days previously. Zambendorf showed Galileo the pictures and asked if the Taloid
shown in them was his brother.
Thirg, utterly bewildered at seeing for the first time the face of the fabulous
Enlightener that the whole country was talking about—who had pacified the
Waskorians, saved Carthogia from invasion, and now, allegedly, departed to put a
permanent end to further Kroaxian mischief—confirmed to the Wearer that it was.
“He is the brother of whom you spoke?” Kleippur asked incredulously as Thirg
gaped at the Lumian long-distance seeing device. “The hearer who came to warn
you when the Kroaxian Council ordered your arrest?”
“It is he!” Dornvald exclaimed, having also just arrived. “Behold— the mystic we
last saw praying to the skies with the villagers of Xerxeon.”
“He was convinced that his voices had led him there to see the fulfillment of
some momentous destiny,” Thirg said weakly, still staring at the viewing window.
“It appears his inspiration was more substantially founded than I had credited.”
“How comes Thirg’s brother, Groork, to this exalted station in which we now find
him?” Kleippur inquired, pressing the button that would open the viewing
vegetable’s ears.
Several hundred miles away across darkened deserts of rock-strewn hydrocarbon
sands and mountains of naked ice, Zambendorf read the words that appeared on the
screen in front of him. “I’ll explain it all later. We may not have a lot of
time,” he said gruffly, and cut the connection.
At one of the consoles across the aisle behind Zambendorf in the Lander’s aft
communications cabin, Hank Frazer was taking a return call from Dave Crookes. “I
found out which operator had the most recent slot down there,” Crookes said. “It
was Sharon Beatty—one of our people from Leon Keyhoe’s section. I talked to her
about ten minutes ago. She said that the Taloids are staging a big public
execution in Padua, and Henry got all excited and went galloping off to be sure
not to miss it. All she knew apart from that, she said, was that it concerned a
miracle-worker who’s been causing Henry a lot of trouble lately. Is that enough
for you to figure out the rest?”
“It sure is,” Frazer said. “Oh, and Dave, one more thing—did she have any idea
when this was supposed to happen? Did you ask her that?”
“Yes I did. She said about twenty hours from when Henry heard about it—that’s
something like ten hours from now.”
Back at the Taloid camp, Zambendorf, Vernon, and Abaquaan told Nelson that they
had received word from the sky that a public execution was being arranged in
Padua city, and it was Moses’ desire that the intended victim should be
saved—which they felt safe in presuming to be the case. They didn’t say who the
intended victim was, and Nelson assumed they were referring to someone that
Moses had learned about after his arrival at the city. In response to their
further questioning Nelson informed them that the customary place for conducting
executions of major criminals and heretics was a high cliff located just outside
the city. Here, before a natural public amphitheater, the victims were pushed
from a wide rock ledge halfway up the face at the top of a long, ceremonial
staircase, to fall two hundred feet into an open tank containing some kind of
corrosive liquid. This was the usual method of executing heretics, Nelson
explained, because the procedure also embodied the elements of a trial,
permitting a higher justice the opportunity to intervene in the event of
wrongful conviction: According to doctrine, any innocent cast from the ledge