There were already better than two dozen people in Emmett’s large living room. Some of them Janas knew, most he did not. Among those he recognized were Hal Danser, Juan Kai and Paul D’Lugan. Emmett himself was standing to one side, talking with a tall, slender, dark-haired woman who was probably Janas’ senior by half a century.
“Bob,” Emmett called across the room, “come here. There’s someone I want you to meet.”
Janas crossed to the couple.
“Citizeness Syble Dian,” Emmett said, “our attorney. This is Bob Janas.”
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Janas said, shaking her offered hand.
“So you’re the infamous Robert Janas,” the woman said.
“I guess I am,” Janas answered with a smile.
“You look just as I pictured you,” she said
“You can take that as a compliment if you want,” Emmett said.
“By all means,” Syble Dian said ‘I meant it that way.”
“Thank you.”
After a brief, “You’re welcome,” Citizeness Dian went on: “Do you think you can find a way to get us out of this mess? I’m afraid that there’s nothing the legal department can do now.” She glanced at Paul D’Lugan, the expression on her face seeming to say that he was her antithesis, the “illegal” department.
“I don’t know,” Janas told her. “I hope so.”
By fifteen minutes past twenty, after listening to a private suggestion from Janas, Emmett called the meeting to order.
“First of all,” Emmett began, “I want to make sure that none of us have been bugged. Someone has taken a great liking to placing miniature transmitters on us and our friends.”
He paused for a moment and let the impact of his words sink in.
“Now,” he went on, “I’d like you to go off in pairs, undress, and carefully check your clothing and the clothing of your partner for bugs. Look for any small, regular shaped objects that shouldn’t be where you find them. If they can’t be identified, destroy them.
“You can use our bedrooms for undressing. Miriam will show you the way.”
After a small amount of subdued mumbling, those present accepted Emmett’s suggestion and went out to check. The better part of a half hour was consumed in the process.
“Thank you,” Emmett said when they had all returned. “I feel a little better now.”
Janas noticed that Emmett did not mention the half dozen or so noisers planted in various spots around the room. If there were a spy in their midst, he thought, it would be just as well that he did not know of the signal disrupting devices.
“Things are coming to a head,” Emmett went on to say. “We all know what Altho Franken has done, the dangers to which he has exposed the Solar Trading Company. Well, we have a man with us tonight who knows those dangers far better than any of the rest of us.”
He paused for a moment, looked at Janas, and then turned back to his audience.
“Bob Janas is the man who started this organization and we ought to thank him for it. He was the first to realize what would happen as the Alliance grew stronger. He had spent most of his life on the star worlds and he saw that the rebels could never be satisfied with merely driving the Federation back to Earth. If they were ever to be safe they would have to come to Earth and make the Federation recognize their sovereignties.
“Bob also realized that the STC would be drawn into the Rebellion during its last stages, if not before, and he began to do what he could to see that it stayed neutral.
“I won’t go into everything he’s done, but let me say one thing: Bob has spent a fortune—and risked his life—to get a set of reports that could save the STC from destruction. We’ve got to do everything we can to see that those reports are used and acted upon—or Altho Franken and that power hungry madman, Jonal Herrera, will see the whole Spiral Arm destroyed.”
A few faces showed shock at Emmett’s frank appraisal of the Federation Chairman. Not that it was a criminal offense to speak of him that way, not technically, but the Chairman had his ways of punishing those who spoke against him.
“Bob, will you tell us about your reports?” Emmett said.
Janas stood up, opened his attaché case and took out a duplicate set of the typewritten reports that he had given Altho Franken. He briefly went over the information contained in the reports, elaborating here and there on certain points. There were a few questions asked, mostly academic ones, for by and large the men and women present had already come to the same conclusions—it was suicide for the STC to take sides.
“Tell us what Franken said when you talked with him,” Emmett suggested.
Janas lit a cigarette and looked at the others for a moment.
“Franken has made up his mind,” he said slowly. “There’s nothing anyone can say or do to make him change it. It’s that simple.”
“Did he read your reports?” one of the men asked.
“No, he gave them to his secretary to read,” Janas said. “He was supposed to give Franken a digest of them.”
“Milt Anchor?” Syble Dian asked. When Janas nodded, she went on. “Anchor sympathizes with the Federation. He’ll do nothing to change Franken’s mind.”
Several heads nodded in agreement.
“Then what do we do?” Paul D’Lugan asked angrily.
Janas turned to look at the younger man, sensing what he was going to suggest. No one spoke for a few moments.
“You all know it,” D’Lugan said. “We don’t have any choice now. There’s only one way left to save the STC.”
He paused as if waiting for someone else to say it.
“I don’t like it,” Emmett said suddenly.
“Nobody likes it, Jarl,” Janas said, “but we can’t beat around the bush about it. Mr. D’Lugan is suggesting that we use force against Citizen Franken.”
Voices mumbled across the room.
“What I want to know is this,” Janas said, “does anyone else have a better idea?”
A smile crept across D’Lugan’s face.
“I don’t,” Janas went on after a while. “I don’t like the idea of storming Franken’s office by force. I’ll do anything I can to avoid it, but if there’s no other way…” He left it to hang in the air.
“Let’s do this,” Jarl Emmett suggested. “All of us go home and sleep on it. Go over it again in your minds: the alternatives and the consequences. See if you can come up with something better. Let’s not make any rash decisions tonight. Then we’ll get together here tomorrow night at the same time and decide. Another twenty-four hours won’t make that much difference.”
Janas was to remember those words later, but at the moment he only felt relief. A postponement would really solve nothing, but it would give them all a breathing spell, a chance to collect their thoughts a little better, to maybe come up with some alternative to a “palace coup” in STC Central.
D’Lugan insisted on deciding then, at that very moment, warning them that Franken might get wind of their plans and take action against them. A majority overruled him and he was forced, under protest, to accept it.
Janas stayed for a few moments after the others left. Sitting on one of Emmett’s luxurious couches, a drink in his hand, Janas repeated D’Lugan’s warning.
“Really, Jarl,” he said, “D’Lugan’s no fool. Franken might get wind of what we’re doing. You can’t rule out a possibility of a spy in the ‘Committee.”
“I know,” Emmett agreed. “Franken’s tried hard enough to spy on us, if that’s who’s doing it.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“Him or Herrera. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, as far as I can see.”
“I think you’d better be ready to act,” Janas said slowly, “just in case Altho, or whoever, tries to force our hand.”
“I’ve got a couple of tentative plans,” Emmett said, “if we have to act. Everyone’s briefed on them but you. They’re mostly Paul’s ideas, but he’s good at that sort of thing.”
“I suspect he would be,” Janas said with a smile. “I’m glad he’s on our side.”
“Sometimes I wonder,” Emmett replied with a similar smile. “Oh, I don’t mean I think he may be the spy.”
“I know what you mean. What’s eating at him anyway?”
“I’m not sure,” Emmett said. “He’s never told me, but I think he had some relatives on Antigone, brother and his family or something. And then the Federation shot up his ship in '77. He thinks it was on purpose.”
“He’s not the only one who has that idea.”
“I know,” Emmett replied. “He’s got a lot of hatred inside him, and Altho’s a good one to take it out on.”
“Tell me about the plans,” Janas said, sitting back on the couch and sipping his drink.
The hour was late when he finally took leave of the Emmett family, dozens of ideas swarming in his mind. He climbed into the waiting hovercab and rode back to the Officer’s Hostel.
Chapter XII
Seven and a half parsecs from Earth, in the direction where the constellation Aquila lies, a battle raged. The fleets of the Federation had met the rebels—and were being pushed back.
Within the power hungry vacuum called Non-space, great behemoths of steel tore at each other. Sheets of flame flickered on force screens. Nuclear missiles exploded like tiny novae. Men died as starships became fragments of burning metal and flaming gas. But the battle raged on.
The greatest warship ever put to space by Earth, the mighty Salamis, was torn in a dozen places. There was no longer any living thing within her, at least not living in the sense that men live, but there was still a mind aboard her, a mind whose brain was made of transistors and ultra-microminiature integrated circuit modules, of relays and ferrite cores—and that mind fought on.
Her protecting force screen flickered and faded ominously, yet always came back to full power in time to intercept missiles or energy blasts that could have destroyed her. In turn she gave back the fire, opening her screens for fractions of nanoseconds to allow her own missiles and energy blasts to speed toward their destinations.
Again and again the enemy hemmed her in, hammered at her screens, poured nuclear flame into her discharge banks, sought to break down her shield, to get past her defenses and reduce her to vapor and fragments. And again and again she held them off, destroying them, driving them back, then falling away, fighting a delaying action as, coexistent light-year by light-year, coexistent parsec by parsec, the Federation fleet slowly yielded to the rebels.
Then, at last, the inevitable happened. A stronger force of the enemy encircled the Salamis, cutting her off from aid, lashing at her, so loading her force screens that she could no longer absorb the energy. Her screens flamed up brightly. She glowed like a tiny star, illuminating space around her for thousands of kilometers—then they failed. The most powerful force screens ever built into a warship burst and the wall of energy around the Salamis imploded, rushed in toward a common center, the Salamis herself.
The tiny star flamed brighter still—her nuclear engines vanished—matter became energy—energy passed through itself and then exploded outward. The Salamis ceased to be.
A cheer went up from the rebel forces. They had beaten the best the Federation had to throw against them. They pushed forward. The Federation lines broke, turned tail, fled toward Earth.
The rebels followed—this battle, at least, was over. Earth lay before them.
Aboard his flagship, the heavy battle cruiser Guadalcanal, General Henri Kantralas wept, but whether out of sadness or gratitude, no man knew.
Chapter XIII
Sleep did not come easily to Robert Janas on the night of the meeting at Jarl Emmett’s home. Slowly, reluctantly, he was coming to the conclusion that there was no other choice open to the “conspirators.” If they did sincerely believe that the STC’s only hope lay in neutrality then they had no choice but to do what they could to save it—even if that meant violence against the person of the president of the corporation, against Altho Franken, who had been Janas’ friend for more decades than he liked to remember.
Lying naked on the bed, physically tired but mentally wide awake, too many questions in his mind, Janas found himself oddly introspective, oddly indecisive.
In an age when government totalitarianism grew stronger by the day, Robert Janas had been raised to believe certain ancient ideals, the morals and ethics of the culture that had built the Solar Trading Company and opened the paths to the stars. Janas’ father had taught him well: the only moral relationships between men are those of a purely voluntary nature. Men must come together, his father had said, of their own free will and contract between themselves.
No man must use force, Janas believed without ever really consciously expressing it before, unless it was first used against him, and then only to defend himself, to free himself of what other men would cause him to do against his will, against his own rational judgment. “To initiate the use of force is a moral abomination.”
Can we, Janas asked himself, a deeper part of his mind observing him, wondering about this uncharacteristic hesitation, asking what it was that made him stop and deliberate so long on this course of action, that caused him a sort of moral uncertainty that he had not known in many years… Can we use violence against Franken? Or in doing so will we become no better than he is? Does this end justify this means?
Into Janas’ mind flashed a scene of the major city of Odin, the streets of University filled with raging mobs, flames devouring the greatest citadel of learning in mankind’s history, Federation soldiers murdering, raping, plundering, destroying—and the citizens of Odin striking back at the Federation with murder, rape, plunder and destruction. They were—had been—honest, decent people, men and women who had believed as Janas believed, driven by the oppression of the Federation, goaded by their own zealots, into striking back with the only weapons at hand, and in that process destroying themselves and the very things they had sought to defend.
It is not they who have initiated the use of force, Janas told himself, lying there in the darkness, gazing at the faint sparkles of light thrown against the ceiling through the unpolarized window. It is the Federation, and that decades ago. It is the Federation and the men who lead it, the growing power of the tyrants of the past thirty or forty decades, who had initiated the violence, who have declared to themselves the right to coerce and use force. It is the Federation that has violated men’s rights, that has demanded that men act against their own judgments. It is the Federation itself that is outlaw, not the rebels who seek to destroy it.
And Franken? Janas asked himself. What of him? In allying himself with the Federation he has accepted their code of morality, he has made himself one with them and agreed that men do have the right to force other men to do their will. In that, Franken has accepted their guilt. In that, Franken has joined those who have initiated the use of force—and we have the right, if not the moral obligation, to return force with force, to take action against Altho Franken himself.
Janas stopped and asked himself: is this reason or merely rationalisation? Have I started with a conclusion and worked backward to build a framework to support it?
In the darkness he again visualised the horror and death in the streets of Odin and told himself that he was right, that the Odinese were right, that even the rebels—or at least General Kantralas—were right. The STC must be stopped from siding with the Federation—and destroying itself. Force must be used against Altho Franken.
It was still dark when he drifted off to sleep, though dawn was not long in coming.
*
The breakfast hour was long past when Janas finally awoke, so he called the desk and asked that a glass of juice and a cup of coffee be delivered to his suite. While he waited, he looked out again at the bald peak of Mount Union, at the grim reminder of nuclear war and what it had done nearly a millennium and a half ago. That specter still haunted him. It wouldn’t be the same now, he knew. Things had changed since that
ancient war. Now men had force screens to deflect the nuclear flame, energy cannon to stop the missiles still hundreds of kilometers away—but the bombs were bigger now, terribly bigger, and energy cannon could blast through force screens—and whole planets (smoldering Antigone) could be incinerated. One bomb, of sufficient size, could turn half the Colorado Plateau into a molten bed of lava, and where would that leave mankind a thousand years from now?
Just before he turned away from the window, Janas saw the weekly tour boat coming in from Flagstaff, making a wide swing around Central, letting the tourists get one grand, overall view of the STC city before landing in the central field and plunging them into the panorama of the past, the commercial history of the last twelve hundred years. As the big lumbering chopper settled in the field, Janas fought against wondering about the tourists of the future; would they come to see the Great Arizonal Abyss?
You’re getting old, Robert Janas, he told himself just before the boy brought his coffee and juice. The century mark has done something to you, taken the fight out of you. Snap out of it!
Over his coffee and first cigarette of the morning, he reviewed the structure of the Solar Trading Company. He sketched out the chain of command on a piece of paper, the flow by which Altho Franken’s orders had gone out to the STC starships, ordering them to give aid to the Federation.
Altho, president, stood at the top of the pyramid. He was, in theory, responsible to the Board of Directors, though in practice his hands were free to do as he chose as long as he could justify his actions as being in the best interest of the corporation. Since, at the present time, the Board was composed primarily of Franken’s relatives and supporters, there was little chance of overruling him through that body. However there was an alternative course available.
Below Franken came a raft of vice presidents, twelve in number, each responsible for one major division of the corporation. The most important of these, at least from Janas’ viewpoint, was the Vice President in Charge of Operations, Bilthor Franken, Altho’s older brother, whom Janas knew but slightly. He was, so Janas understood, an honest, hardworking man with little imagination, who followed his dynamic younger brother’s orders with little question. Under him came Jarl Emmett, Operations Supervisor, the man who saw to the implementation of the decisions and orders of Bilthor Franken. When the orders had gone out for the STC to aid the Federation Emmett had known of them, but had been unable to prevent them.
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