Broghuilio’s eyes widened. The veins at the sides of his neck began pulsating. “You are the traitor!” he spat. “Now we see the vermin exposing himself at last. What is this talk of an ultimatum?”
“Traitor? No.” Verikoff remained unperturbed. “Merely a question of calculating the winning odds, which after all is your own dictum. You have set us up well to assume control of Earth very soon, and we thank you for it, but unfortunately for you that puts us on the winning side. Which do you think we’d rather be-.caretakers of an outpost of your empire, or rulers of our own? The answer should not be difficult.”
“What do you mean by we?” Broghuillo demanded. “How many of you are behind this?”
“All of us, of course. We manipulate all of Earth’s major national governments and therefore have control over its strategic forces. And we have enjoyed the cooperation of the Thuriens for a very long time now. How else do you think they’ve been able to talk to the Terrans without your knowing anything about it? They know that you, not the Terrans, are the real threat to the Galaxy, and we have persuaded them to allow us a free hand to deal with
it. So we command a fully armed planet, backed by Thurien technology. It’s all over, Broghuilio. All you have left to save now is your skin.”
A short distance back from the open door through which Verikoff was speaking, Hunt turned an astounded face toward Lyn and leaned close to whisper in her ear. “I didn’t think he had it in him. The guy deserves an Oscar.” Beside them, Sobroskin, looking as if he didn’t really believe it either, had lowered the automatic with which he had been covering Verikoff from the passageway.
Broghuilio was looking bewildered. “Strategic forces? What strategic forces? Earth doesn’t have any strategic forces.”
Then JEVEX interrupted again. “We have an alarm condition in Sector Five. Something unidentified is attempting to penetrate the net. Two destroyers have been detached from station and sent to investigate.”
“Don’t bother me with such things now,” Broghuilio raged, waving his arms impatiently. “Delegate to Sector Control and report later.” He looked back at Verikoff again. “Earth demilitarized years ago.”
“Is that what you believe?” Verikoff leered openly. “You poor simpleton. You don’t really imagine we’d allow Earth to disarm when we knew this day was coming, do you? That story was purely for your consumption. Ironically you almost changed it back into the truth. It has given the Thuriens a lot of amusement.”
Broghuilio still couldn’t make any sense out of it. “Earth has disarmed,” he insisted. “Our surveillance . . JEVEX has shown us-”
“JEvEx!” Verikoff scoffed. “VISAR has been pumping fairy tales into JEVEX for years.” His expression became hard and threatening. “Listen to me, Broghuilio, for I am in no mood to repeat myself. This demonstration at Thurien has taken things too far. The Ganymeans have seen now what you represent, and they are not of a mind to hold us back by scruples. So this is our ultimaturn to you: either you withdraw from Thurien now, and agree to place your entire military command under our jurisdiction unconditionally, or the Thuriens will transfer through to Jevlen a combined Terran force that will blow you to stardust-you, your whole planet, and that laughable aggregation of scrap that you call a computer network.”
Somewhere deep inside JEVEX something hiccuped. A million
tasks that had been running inside the system froze in the confusion as directives coming down from the highest operating levels of the nucleus redefined the whole structure of priority assignments to force an emergency analysis of the new data. And in the middle of it all, the routines that had been scanning for inquisitive probes through h-space faltered. It was only for a few seconds, but.
On Thurien, vis~ spoke suddenly to end a long vigil that had been dragging silently by for hours. “Something’s happened! I’ve got a link to zoRAc!” Even as Caidwell was jumping to his feet, and Heller and Danchekker were looking up with startled faces on the other side of the room, streams of binary were pouring across the gulf to the Shapieron, light-years away, and VISAR had begun analyzing the patterns assembled by ZORAC.