Adreya Laelye had approached Zeigler, claiming that her capacity as SOE’s senior representative gave her the authority to speak on behalf of the rest of the base. Probably she felt an obligation to show some such responsibility, since officially Zeigler himself had been next in the mission’s line of command after Gallian. Zeigler, however, had been unimpressed, stating that he would deal with a representative of his own choosing at such time as it suited him to do so. Keene had expected something like that and had confided as much to Sariena. But both of them had agreed that Adreya should be allowed her chance to try. The outcome had left Sariena feeling all the more despondent.
“It isn’t just confusion over this setback we have right now,” she told Keene. “But suddenly it seems as if”—she waved an arm, as if searching for words in the air—”everything we’ve been working for could be in danger. It’s going to be the way it always was, all over again, isn’t it? Nations and then empires built on crushed human spirit. Tacitus said it over two thousand years ago, didn’t he: ‘To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace.’ ”
Keene looked at her in surprise. “Did he? You know, it never ceases to amaze me how much Kronians know about Earth.”
“What makes people that way? Can it be something about the planet, do you think?”
“Oh, I’d say more a question of being conditioned there.”
“Not something inherent in human nature—permanent, unchangeable?”
“Then why not the Kronians too? Aren’t they human?”
Sariena shook her head, not wanting to pursue it. “Just now, I don’t know what to think.”
* * *
Owen Erskine crouched in the cover of a trench leading into a pit at the rear of the Lab block, where concrete was due to be poured for a foundation. He had come down from the Varuna to help set up the ground-based probe maintenance hangar intended for the base. But since then a new priority was demanding attention, and nobody else seemed to be doing much about it. Landen Keene, whom Heeland had introduced in the probe bay up in the ship, had struck him as the kind of person who might take the lead in standing up to somebody like Zeigler, but his crew were continuing to provide power for the base as if nothing had happened. There was a rumor going around that Adreya Laelye from SOE had gone in to see Zeigler with some kind of demands that morning and been thrown out. Others had done a lot of talking but not much else. It seemed that everyone was paralyzed after the Gallian shooting. Well, things like that had always happened, always would, and life was the art of working around them. Someone would just have to make the first move in shaking them out of it.
The two guards were posted together as had been the pattern since yesterday, at the base of the crane behind the stores buildings, from where they could watch the rear area of the base. The location also meant that they were screened from most of the other directions where activity was going on. From time to time, one of them would patrol to the far end of the stores complex, check past the corner toward the workshops and the power installations, and retrace his steps. The moment Erskine had chosen was the next time one of them was halfway along the route, out of sight from the rest of the base.
Dru, a one-time Turkish landscaper, was in position by a stack of pipe sections, hidden from the guards but in view from the trench where Erskine was. Ida, also Terran-Kronian, was up on a work platform in the scaffolding behind the crane, securing lighting cables, again in sight of Erskine and waiting for his signal. The two Kronians who had agreed to join them were concealed among crates stacked behind the storage buildings. Kronians were no different from anyone else in having what it took, Erskine was convinced. All it needed was for someone to show them how. With a couple of weapons in their hands, it would be that much easier to acquire more. Then the rest of the base would get the message and follow suit, and the whole thing would be over by the afternoon. Erskine hadn’t come all the way home to be pushed around by a bunch of jerks like this.