Keene was aghast. “My God! Look . . . I know something’s been—”
“Ah, but that’s not the end of it. Two hours ago, I was advised of an intention to send a military boarding party up to this ship and asked to cooperate peacefully `for our own security and protection,’ whatever that is supposed to mean. . . .”
“Jesus Christ! I—”
Idorf’s hand appeared in the foreground on the screen, pointing a finger. “Very well, they have made their rules clear. Now this is what I would like you to convey, if you would, to whoever down there should hear it. Years ago, when relations between our two societies were more strained than in recent times, there seemed a real possibility that Earth might send an expedition to take over Kronia forcibly. We devoted considerable effort of the kind that produced vessels such as this one to the development of advanced defense systems, and it has been our policy ever since to build all new ships with a dual-role capability. The Osiris is armed, Dr. Keene. The weapons that it carries are of extreme potency. We will fire upon any craft, manned or otherwise, that attempts approaching closer than one hundred miles without authorization, whether or not it acknowledges further warnings. I trust you will have gathered by now that I am not of a mood to make jokes. I’m hesitant to put this to the people I’ve listened to today, because I fear they might attribute the same slipperiness to my words as appears to apply to their own. But as I said, you strike me as someone who will put it in the right way, to the right persons. Have I been clear enough? And if so, will you do as I ask?”
Keene eased himself back in the chair and exhaled a long, silent whistle. “Yes. Perfectly clear, Captain. . . .” He thought furiously about how much it might be wise to divulge. Finally, he decided that the way to respond to candor was with candor. “I already knew that the ship was armed,” he said. “When we visited you, a colleague and I strayed off the path we were supposed to be on, and saw inside one of the hub cupolas. The machinery looked like an ejector, and whatever it launches is obviously nuclear. What is it? At a guess—some kind of fission-pumped, multipointing beam device? X-ray laser, maybe?”
Idorf’s eyebrows arched. “I respect your frankness, Dr. Keene. And you are remarkably well informed. Each capsule deploys a gigajoule charge and generates multiple, independently targetable beams at a ten-thousandth of an Angstrom. I don’t think I have to spell out what that would do to a target at a hundred miles.”
Or a thousand, Keene thought to himself. “I am a nuclear engineer,” he said. “And I worked in plasma physics research for a while. In fact I’ve been involved in studies of that kind of system. How much of the specification are you prepared to release?”
Idorf shrugged. “As much as it takes to convince them.”
“I think I can do that for you,” Keene said dryly. “Okay, let me ask you for some numbers.” He paused and looked at the screen quizzically. “But first . . .”
Idorf waited. “Yes?”
“What’s going on? Do you know any more than I do? . . . What is this all about?”
“Nobody’s told you yet, eh?”
Keene showed his palms. “I’ve been trying to find out all day. It’s almost like you said. The whole of the Washington’s acting as if there is a war about to break out.”
Idorf regarded him fixedly for a few seconds; then, he seemed to make up his mind and nodded. His expression was grim. “Yesterday evening, I passed some news down to Gallian that had just come in from Saturn. Our observatories there have been able to make measurements that won’t be possible here for a few more days until Athena moves farther out from the glare of the Sun. It seems we can forget further speculating about whether the electrical environment can be altered, Dr. Keene. Athena has come out from perihelion on a changed orbit. It isn’t going to cross fifteen million miles ahead of Earth as was previously thought. It’s coming straight at us!”