Voyage From Yesteryear

Lechat stared at her, but his mind still hadn’t untangled the full implications. Beside him Colman’s jaw clamped tight. “Somebody faked it to look like the Chironians did it,” Colman grated.

Bernard’s jaw dropped. “Sterm?” he gasped, then looked down at Celia. “You did tell him?”

Celia nodded. “That evening, as soon as I got up to the ship. I think I must have been hysterical or something. But yes, I told him.”

Lechat was nodding slowly to himself. “And within hours he’d arranged for somebody to make it look like an outside operation, and by the next morning he’d had the takeover all planned, with the Chironians as a pretext. Everything fits. But who would have done it?”

“SDs,” Colman said at once. “It was- a professional job.”

‘Would they accept a job like that?” Jean asked, sounding dubious,

Colman nodded. “Sure. They’re selected and trained to obey orders and not ask questions. Some of them would shoot their own mothers if the right person said so. And Stormbel was in on it. It fits.” He thought for a second longer, and then looked at Lechat and Bernard. “There were a lot of suspicious things about Padawski breaking out too. It couldn’t have happened the way it did without inside help. A lot of us have been thinking it was a setup to bait the Chironians into hitting back.”

Lechat’s brows lifted and then creased into an even deeper frown. “And then there were those bombings…He looked down at Celia. °Was Stern behind those things as well?

“I wouldn’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me,” Celia answered. “I just know the true story about Howard because. . because..”

“Does anyone else know about Howard?” Colman asked. “Veronica, for instance?’

Celia shook her head. “Nobody until now.”

Colman exhaled a long breath. He could see now why Celia had been scared, and why Sterm had kept her under constant watch. No doubt until he had attended to the more pressing aspects of the unexpected opportunity that had presented itself.

“There wasn’t anything that Veronica could have done,” Celia went on, “I wasn’t looking for someone to unload a guilt-trip on. What I had to say was a lot bigger than that. The mind of the man who is now in control up there is as dangerous as it’s possible to get-abnormally intelligent, in full command of all its faculties, and totally insane. Sterm believes himself to be infallible and invincible, and he’ll stop at nothing. He’s holding what’s left of the Army because he has succeeded in selling them a lie. And I was the only person who could expose that lie. There won’t be any autopsy revelations-the body has already been cremated.” Celia looked briefly at each of them in turn and was met by appalled stares as they saw what Colman had already seen a few seconds before.

“Yes, I knew I was in danger, but that was secondary,” Celia told them. “I still can expose the lie. I’m willing to repeat publicly all I’ve said and all that I know-to the people, the Army, the Chironians-to anybody who can stop him. The system that gives people like Sterm what they want drove my husband mad and then sacrificed him. There must he no more sacrifices. That was why I had to get away.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

C0LMAN LEFT THE Fallows house shortly before midnight with Bernard. Lechat, and Celia. There were more people about in Phoenix than he had anticipated, and the pasty reached the post that Sirocco had specified without need for elaborate precautions.

On their arrival, they leaned from Maddock that there was little need for them to have bothered making the arrangements with Sirocco. Border security around Phoenix was disintegrating, with most of the SDs being pulled back to protect the shuttle base, the barracks, and other key points, and the regular troops who were left scattered thinly along the perimeter doing little to interfere with the civilian exodus. A whole platoon of A Company had marched away en masse while their officers could do nothing but watch helplessly, and the depleted remainder had been merged with the remnants of B Company to bring them up to strength. More SDs were disappearing too. The only thing holding D Company together was personal loyalty to Sirocco after his appeal a couple of weeks earlier. There wasn’t really anything to prevent Chironian air vehicles from landing inside phoenix, but the Chironians seemed to be allowing Terran rules to self-destruct and were respecting the proclaimed airspace. Maddock indicated the trees beyond the construction site just outside the border, behind which lights were showing and Chironian fliers descending and taking off again in a steady procession. “No need for you to walk very far,” he told them. “I can call Kath and have her send a cab over. What’s her number?”

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