“That’s you two,” Orzin said needlessly. “You know the item. This is a recording of a version of it that went out across Chryse last night!” He looked from one to the other, noted their incredulous looks with evident satisfaction, and went on before they could ask, “Luodine tried to get her agency to put it out, but the people in charge there wouldn’t do it. Too obedient to the system. So Yassem decided that if there was no way through the official net, she’d go around it. She used our facilities here to access the Xuchimbo system, and piggybacked a coded message on their outgoing trunk beam that the Querl intercepted. They’re doing the broadcasting for us!”
Marie stared. “Querl? You mean the rebel worlds?”
“Yes! Amazing, isn’t it! That was several days ago now. The Querl have positioned an arc of their own relays somewhere outside of Earth—they can’t come as far in as orbit, since the Chryseans control near space. So we have our own link now. We lose contact for a little under ten hours each day.”
Cade was having trouble taking it in. “Querl?” he repeated. “You mean they’ve showed up here . . . in our Solar System?”
“Well, they’re out there somewhere, anyhow,” Orzin replied, waving a hand vaguely. “And you can bet the Chryseans are out there looking for them too. But it’s a lot of space to get lost in. And they have sophisticated ways of deploying decoys and switching the incoming return signals around to make it impossible to get a sure fix on where the relays are.”
Cade and Marie looked at each other, stupefied. They were being broadcast around alien star systems light-years away . . . ?
“And you two aren’t the only news that’s going out. Luodine and Nyarl have been collecting material from all over.” Orzin voiced more commands in Hyadean. The image on the screen changed to show Luodine speaking to the camera, and then soldiers and rescue workers pulling dazed and bleeding figures from wrecked vehicles scattered and upended all ways in front of a background of burning buildings. “A refugee column hit by an air strike near Minneapolis,” Orzin commented. It was followed by an aircraft’s gun-camera view of missiles flaming away and bursting among trucks halted on the approach to a pontoon bridge. Figures were jumping out, fleeing, falling. . . . “FWA fighter-bombers attacking one of the Mississippi crossing points.” Then there was Luodine again, superposed on a desert scene littered with knocked-out armor. “Aftermath of a tank duel south of Odessa, Texas. There’s lots more.” Orzin looked across at Cade and Marie pointedly—as if this could have significance out of all proportion to appearances. “According to the first reports we’re getting back from Querl sources, it’s creating a sensation back home. This is the first time anyone has reported anything direct from the other side of what’s been happening on Earth. We must be doing something right. Reactions from the Chrysean government are furious. Naturally, they’re denouncing it all as Querl propaganda and fakery. But people on Chryse are taking notice. Luodine’s face is familiar there. They know she talks straight.” Orzin wagged a finger. “But that’s not all. She doesn’t want to just sit here passing on news that comes in. Her style has always been to go out herself and find it. She’s persuaded the Air Force to provide her and Nyarl with a jet to turn into a mobile studio. You’d have to hear her enthusiasm to believe it. I think she has finally discovered what she really wants to do.”
* * *
In an NBC news studio at the Rockefeller Center in New York, Casper Toddrel gazed somberly at the camera showing “live” and completed the address that he had prepared as part of a public relations effort being coordinated from the White House. “It will be a painful duty. It will not be a pleasant duty. But it is a necessary duty. For as long as it takes, we cannot speak of these places as belonging to America anymore. They have become an extension of foreign power into this continent. The next step will be a bridgehead for invasion. We, in the East at this hour, stand as the last bastion of defense for the values that America has always stood for. The people in California and Oregon, New Mexico and Montana are not our enemy. The enemy is the corrupt gang of traitors and opportunists who have turned Sacramento into a provincial capital of China. I ask you all to stand by us and our Hyadean allies to reverse this tragic aberration that had befallen us. We can, and we will, not only bring all of America back into the fold, but build out of it a stronger and more united America than has ever existed. A new United States, purged, reformed, revitalized, fit not only to assume again its rightful place as leader among the nations of this world, but to establish this world as a full and equal partner, enjoying all due rights and dignity, in the wider community of our newfound interstellar cousins.” Toddrel paused to let his audience contemplate the vision, then nodded solemnly. “Thank you.”