NEW YORK CITY
DONOVAN HOUSE
FEDERAL CAPITAL DISTRICT
JANUARY 21, 1977
"I still say it stinks, General," Frederick Lefarge said. His body somehow gave the impression of tension, even when he sat relaxed in the stiff government-issue office chair.
Nathaniel Stoddard nodded, considering the man who sat across from him.
Thinner
, he thought.
And not just in body
. Pale as well, with the pallor that comes from long months inside a submarine, or a spaceship.
"I agree, but…" He pressed a spot on the desk screen, and a thinfilm rectangle slid up along one wall.
"India hurt us," he said quietly. "Not so much physically— it was the sinkhole of the Alliance—but in our souls. Our first major brush with the Domination, and we lost. Granted it was the Indians' own damn fault; that disinformation campaign wouldn't have produced secession if they hadn't been completely irrational about it. Granted, but we still lost, and another three hundred million went under the Yoke."
He rapped the desk with his knuckles. "First, we needed a victory, and the asteroid agreement is that. What we have to guard against is not treason, that's the
enemy's problem.
What we have to fear is
defeatism;
the turning-away from useful work into hedonism, because people don't think there
is
a future.
That's the real danger, in the short term."
"I'd rather have kicked the Snakes out of the belt and everything outward."
Stoddard shook his head. "Not feasible, Colonel. It was turning into a struggle of attrition, and they outnumber us." He produced his pipe, took comfort from the ritual of lighting it.
"Nor can we fight full-scale near Earth, not anymore. India took us to the brink of that, and it's only the sheer insanity of Draka ruthlessness that let it get that far." He puffed. "Now, list for me the positive aspects of these miserable few years."
Lefarge shrugged. "The Alliance will stand, now."
Stoddard nodded; the constituent nations had agreed to a full merger of sovereignty. A pity in a way—he had always regretted the increasing uniformity of life in the Alliance— but necessary.
"And not just among the electorate, either." His expression became wholly blank. "Now, I'm about to tell you something that requires complete commitment. If I'm not satisfied by your reactions from this point on, then the only way you will leave this building is as a corpse."
Lefarge sat upright, a slow uncoiling motion. His eyes met the other man's for a long moment.
"You're serious," he said flatly.
"Never more so. Want me to continue?"
The moment stretched. "Yes."
Stoddard cupped the bowl of the pipe. "We—that is, the permanent staff just below the political level—we've become convinced that if things go on as they are, we're headed for the Final War. If only because the limits of the Domination's ability to adapt to technical progress are on the horizon, and they'll bring everything down in wreck rather than see us reduce them to irrelevance."
Lefarge smiled. "Then the only alternatives are annihilation or surrender?"
"Surrender
is
annihilation, certainly for freedom, probably for humanity," he said, nodding agreement. "And the Final War is annihilation, too, It's the seeping realization of that that's been paralyzing our leadership echelons." He touched another spot on the screen, and a starfield lit the rectangle that hung from the ceiling.
"Tell me, Fred, what do you know about fusion power?"
Lefarge blinked narrow-eyed at the older man. "Controlled?
Still a ways off. Plasma-confinement, we just reached breakeven, possibly a workable reactor by the turn of the century. Inertial confinement shows some promise. Solid-state tunneling reactions are tricky and we still don't understand them; much longer."
"Look at this, then." A schematic appeared, a huge sphere with a tube protruding from each end, like a straw through an orange. "Build a big sphere; doesn't matter much of what, as long as it's thick enough. Throw fusion bombs in through this magnetic catapult. Set them off; we've got an electron-beam system that looks likely to work, but uranium's cheap off-planet these days. Bomb goes off, vacuum, no blast. Just radiant energy; shell absorbs the energy, you extract the energy, then beam it anywhere you want via microwave. Simple, robust, nearly as cheap as solar past Mars…"
"Useful," the younger man said without relaxing his lynx stare. "Particularly in the belt. With that, we could really set up a self-sustaining system, and
fast.
But that isn't what you had in mind."
"No. Incidentally, we think the Draka are using a much cruder form of this to mine ice from Sinope or Himalia, off Jupiter."
Another tap on the screen. The artifact that appeared this time was a simple tube of coils and large-scale industrial magnets floating free in space, contained by the outline of an enormous box. "What's buried in New Mexico and eats power?"
"Linear accelerator…" His hands gripped the rests of his chair. "
Antimatter,
by God!"
"Right the first time, give the man a cigar." The stem of the pipe pointed. "And that's the
first
of the secrets you'll be expected to guard. You think, Fred.
Think."
Slowly. "It can't be for bombs. We've already got bigger weapons than we can use." A pause. "Spaceship drives?"
A nod. "Paahtly. The ultimate reaction drive. We've tested models with the minute amounts we've made here Earthside. A great advantage, even over the improved pulsedrive models we're working on. Even over the fusion models that well have in a decade."
"But not enough," Lefarge said. "It'll never be enough, a better weapon, more weapons, even when we've got a lead we're too gutless to use it."
The general frowned. "Fred, the price of open war is
too high
.
And getting higher! They can at least copy what we do." He shook his head, waited for a second, then summoned up another image. "All right, look at this."
This was a spaceship, with an outline he recognized beside it for comparison; a
Hero
-class deepspace cruiser, the type he had been operating out of in the Belt. Those had a 7,000-tonne payload… and this one was dwarfed by the model beside it. A huge cylinder, basically; a wheel and a ball at one end, at the other a long stalk and a cup.
Awareness struck him. "Judas Priest!" he wheezed. "A starship!" For a moment he was a boy again, watching Bat Markam, Alliance Future Patrol, planting the blue-and-gold on a planet of green-tentacled aliens… Then his teeth skinned back.
"Shit."
A bolthole.
"How do you feel about the idea, Fred?"
"Jesus…" He ran a hand over his face. "General, could we do it?"
A shrug. "Ayuh. Theory's all right, the engineering is big but nothing radical. Have to test the drive, but the math works.
Alpha Centauri in forty years. And, Fred, they've been looking that way with the Big Eye." That was the fifty-kilometer reflector at the L-5 beyond Lunar farside. "There's a planet there."
The excitement surged again, mixed sourly with bitterness at the back of his throat. "Inhabitable?"
"Mebbe. Mebbe not. It's got an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, water vapor, continents and oceans… Yes, the definition's that good. A little smaller than Earth and further out; and the orbit's funny, what you'd expect." The Centauri system had three stars; that
must
be complex. "A Mars-type as well, subjovian gas giants, moons, asteroids we
think
from the orbital data. A planet by itself isn't enough these days." More slowly: "How do you
feel
about it, Fred?"
Unconscious of the general's stare, the younger man rose and paced, running a hand through his close-cropped black hair.
"Christ. I love it; that's something I've dreamed since I was a kid.
When the news flash came through about the
Conestoga
reaching orbit, I was on my first date, you know? Sheila Washansky. Her folks were away for the afternoon, we were on the couch upstairs, I had my hand up her skirt and the TV on downstairs—and I dumped her on the floor, I got up so fast.
Never even noticed her walking out the door. Thirteen, my first chance to score, and I never noticed: that shows you how I feel."
He stopped and drove a fist into one palm. "And I hate it, the idea of running away. Even as a last resort," he swung towards the general.—"It
is
a last resort, isn't it?"
"Ayuh."
"Just to get a few hundred clear—"
"More like a hundred thousand, Fred."
At his surprise, Stoddard continued: "The other side aren't the only ones who do technological espionage. They've about perfected a reduced-metabolism system that works; down to less than one percent of normal. Our biology people say they can work out the remaining bugs without using their methods." They both grimaced slightly; one reason the Domination made faster progress in the life sciences was its willingness to expend humans.
"So the passengers age less than a year. Crew in rotation; no more than five years each. Seeds, animals, frozen animal ova, tools, knowledge, fabricators… all the art and history and philosophy the human race has produced. Enough to restart civilization;
our
civilization. America was started by refugees, son. What's your say?"
Lefarge nodded once, then again. "Yes. As a last resort, because too much is at stake. It's not as if the resources were crucial. The Protracted Struggle isn't going to be tipped by a percent here or there."
Stoddard sighed with relief, and his smile was warm.
Hell, that's Uncle Nate's smile,
Lefarge noted with surprise.
"Fred, you just past the test," he said, coming around the desk to lay a hand on his shoulder. "And I can't tell you how glad I am."
"Test?"
"Yes. Look, Fred, we've got
lots
of anti-Draka fanatics; the Domination produces them like a junkyard dog does fleas.
They're useful; that's one reason India cost the Draka the way it did. But fanatics are limited; they can't really think all that well, not where their obsession is concerned,
and they aren't
reliable
.
They've got their private agendas, which is fine if they happen to coincide with the command's, and if not—" He shrugged. "
This
is too big to risk."
Lefarge nodded slowly. "And I've just shown I'm not a fanatic?
General, don't bet on it."
"Mebbe there's a difference between that and a good hate."
He made a production of refilling the pipe. "Well, that was a big enough secret?"
"Oh, sure." Lefarge grinned like a wolf. "Out with it."
Another
secret,
went through him.
And this one
has to be a weapon
.
Something that can well and truly upset the balance.
"Nh-huh. You are going out there. With a promotion to lieutenant colonel. Security chief, overall command with War Emergency Regulation powers. The rank will go up as the Project builds up."
Lefarge whistled silently. War Emergency Regulation. Power of summary execution!
"You see, Fred, you're perfect. Good technical background; good record with the OSS. Known to be space-trained. But not prominent enough to make the Security Directorate flag you, particularly. Not more than they watch fifty, a hundred thousand other officers." There were twenty million in the Alliance military.
"Just the right type to be put in charge of a middling-important project. Like a fusion-power network for the asteroid belt; like an antimatter production facility. Like a fleet of antimatter-powered warships. Layers like an onion; by the time, which God forbid should ever happen, they come to the
New
America,"
—Lefarge nodded at the name—"you'll be senior enough to oversee security work on
that
."
"And?"
Stoddard leaned backward against the desk, cupped an elbow in a hand. "And that's as much as anyone on Earth knows, except me, thee, and a few technical people. Damned few know that much. The technical people will be going out with you; they'll brief you when you get there. All the Chairman and the President know is we're doing
something
, and the appropriations are in the Black Fund."
"Yeah. Everyone's feeling rich these days." Even with the military burden, taxes had been cut and cut again in recent years, as wealth flowed in from new industries and from space.
Economists kept warning that the budget surplus would wreck the economy if prices went on flailing the way they had. "They won't miss it."
"You'll get everything you need. We're encouraging development of the belt, you may have noticed, and doing it hard. That'll give more background to camouflage you, and more local resources to draw on in the later stages. This project is going to be a black hole, and you're the guardian at the event horizon. Nobody comes back. Nobody and
nothing.
Except you, occasionally, and you report verbally to me or my successor. I don't tell anyone anything. Not until it's ready."
For a moment, for the first time in a year, Lefarge felt pure happiness. Then he hesitated, reached into his uniform jacket for a cigarette.
Have to give this up again,
he thought
. At least until
whatever habitat we build gets big enough.
"Any news?" he asked softly. They both knew he could only mean his sister.
"Fred—" Stoddard returned to his chair, fiddled with the controls. "All we've been able to learn is that she's alive, they haven't penetrated her cover, and she's been bought up by a pilot officer who was there." He leaned forward, sorrowful and inexorable. "No, Fred, no. We will
not
expend assets—
people!—trying to pull her out. And we won't try to trade for her, because we have to keep what bargaining power we have for situations where it's really needed."
There was more emotion in the old man's voice than Lefarge had heard in many years. "Fred, I love you both as if you were my own, you know that. Marya's tough and smart. It's not inconceivable she could get out. Or die trying. Until then, the only help, the only protection she has is that cover story. You will not endanger it, understood?"