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Polonaise
curity cubby at the entrance to the center. Michael gestured irritably at them.
“There are a hundred men and women in orbit wholly dependent on us here at the Center. Get back to work, now.” The crowd scattered back to consoles and desks.
Two large gentlemen were in the room, Dana Canning held firmly between them. Her hair was disheveled, her look wild. All traces of the elfin innocence he remembered so fondly were gone.
“You! You lied to me, damn you!”
“I did not lie to you, Dana.”
“You Hed to me about the launch!”
“And the detector? Did I lie to it, too?”
“You—you evaded the question!” She tried to kick him and he stepped carefully out of range. The guards tightened their grip on her.
“You never asked it. If you had, I couldn’t have answered. I decided to take a calculated risk.”
She glanced at him bitterly. “An orbiting station— a missile platform big enough to cover every nuclear station and launch site in the world!”
“Its purpose is primarily commercial and scientific in nature, Dana,” he said quietly, “but it is true that the station does possess some military capability.”
She laughed. There was no humor in it. ” ‘Some military capability’! According to the reports on the tube, you’ve slipped enough warheads up there to destroy any country seconds before a preemptive attack could be launched.”
“Ah, and you’ve hit on it,” he confessed. “To a Pole, even the idea of a ‘preemptive* attack is enough to bring on a bout of nausea. Don’t you see? With the proliferation of atomic arms in the world, somebody had to step in and say ‘Don’t mess around with your new toy or you’ll get spanked.’