“Shit, I hope the cops aren’t so fast,” Murray muttered.
Hunt thought quickly. “Murray, is there any kind of portable communications gadget here-a remote pad for talking to the house system or something? If the Ganymeans figured this much out, they’ll be scanning for Jevlenese transmissions.” Murray consulted with Nixie, who said something to Osaya. Osaya went over to a bedside unit and came back with a tablet of what looked like veined, gray marble with gold inlaid designs and gold touchpads. She held it to the window and tried a few codes, then said something that sounded negative.
“Does that talk to the city net?” Hunt asked Murray.
‘‘It should.”
“Tell her to try fifty-six.”
Murray passed it on, and Osaya tried again. Then a familiar voice said, “Ahah! We seem to be through. Hello, is anybody there?” Then it repeated itself in Jevlenese.
Hunt grinned. “Hello, ZORAC. Not a bad piece of detective work. Was it your doing?”
“Elementary, my dear Hunt. I’ve got Leyel Tones for you.”
“Great.”
Tones’s voice came through from the Shapieron. “Vic, you made it. Who else is there?”
“Gina got out with me. And Chris Danchekker made it with Nixie. We don’t know anything about the others.”
“I fear they’re in captivity,” Tones said. “We don’t understand the situation. What are the Jevlenese trying to do. Do you know?”
“We think so, but it’s a long story. And it’s urgent. It needs to go to the top, to Calazar. Can you get him through VISAR?”
“We’re talking to him right now,” Tones answered. “He’s getting together as many of JPC as he can raise. I’ll put you through to the Thurien circuit.”
ZORAC’s voice said something in jevlenese, and Osaya tapped a code into the tablet. One of the mirrors facing the bed turned into a screen showing Tones standing in the Shapieron’s command deck against a background of crew positions manned by Ganymeans. “It looks as if you’ve found quite a home away from home there, Vic,” ZORAC commented.
“Have they got hold of Caldwell?” Hunt asked, ignoring it.
“He should be arriving soon,” ZORAC answered. “He was playing golf. It’s Sunday afternoon in Washington.”
Then another minor turned into a view of Calazar in vivid, informal clothes. “Dr. Hunt,” he said without preamble. “I feel that we are responsible for all this. What do these Jevienese at PAC want? They have deactivated the connection to VISAR there, and we have no access to them.”
To one side, Murray was shaking his head wonderingly. “That’s Calazar, the Thurien head honcho, here in Osaya’s bedroom? I don’t believe this,” he muttered.
“We’re pretty sure they’re only a smokescreen,” Hunt replied to Calazar. “They probably don’t know themselves what’s really going on. We’re certain that Eubeleus is at the back of it.”
The sudden misgivings on Calazar’s face, even with its alien Ganymean features, was unmistakable. “Why? Where does he fit into it?” he asked. Just then, he was joined on the screen by Porthik Eesyan, a Thurien scientific adviser whom Hunt and Danchekker also both knew of old.
Murray nudged Hunt and nodded in the direction of the window. Outside, a police flier had appeared and was buzzing around the probe. The probe had deployed more antennae and drifted away to circle on a leisurely tour of the area, presumably in an effort to obscure the whereabouts of the location that it was communicating with.
“Look, there might not be much time, so these are the facts,” Hunt said, looking back at the screens showing Calazar and Eesyan, and Tones. “The whole JEVEX business has been a fraud for years. JEVEX isn’t on Jevlen at all. The sites here are dummies and remote interfaces into it. The real guts of the system is all concentrated on Uttan. That’s what Eubeleus is really after—the business here is just a diversion. And if he gets control of it, this planet is going to be hit by an invasion of aliens that are stronger than anything any of us has ever dreamed of. We can go into the details later, but for now you have to believe it. Whatever else happens, you must stop him from getting to Uttan and turning that system back on. Tell him anything you like. This is one time to worry about ethics and principles later.”