Chapter 20

Klem Zareff’s guardsmen were mercenaries. A little over a year ago they had, at best, been homeless drifters, and not a few had been outlaws. Now they were soldiers, well fed, clothed, quartered and equipped, and well and regularly paid. They had a good thing; they were willing to fight to keep it, Merlin or no Merlin. Conn left them to their commander. He did gather the workmen for a short harangue, but that wasn’t really necessary. They had a good thing, too, and most of them realized that they were working toward a better thing. They could be depended upon, too.

They came crowding out and manned lifters; they got the heavy collapsium-cutter maneuvered into place and the shielding down around the cutting-head. After that, there were only four men who could work, each in his own heavily shielded cabin. In spite of the shielding that covered the actual work, there was an awesome display of multicolored light; it was like being in the middle of an aurora borealis. What was going on where that tiny rotating beam of cosmic rays was grinding at the collapsium simply couldn’t have been imagined.

Conn would have liked to stay outside; he could not. Too many things were happening in too many places, and it was all coming in by screen. Rioting had broken out in Storisende and in a dozen other places. He saw, on a news-screen, a mob raging in front of the Executive Palace; yellow-shirted Cybernarchists were battling with city police and Planetary troops, Armageddonists and Human Supremacy Leaguers were fighting both and one another. Above all the confused noise of shouting and shooting, an amplifier was braying: “It’s a lie! It’s a lie! Merlin has been found!“ Newsmen began arriving--Zareff’s men had orders to pass them through the cordon that had been put up around Force Command--and they took up his time. It was worth it, though. They could tell him what was going on.

J. Fitzwilliam Sterber called. Rodney Maxwell had been arrested, on a farrago of fraud charges--”I don’t know who he’s supposed to have defrauded; the Planetary Government is the sole complainant”--and bail was being illegally denied. Sterber’s lawyerly soul was outraged, but he was grimly elated. “You wait till things quiet down a little. We’re going to start a false-arrest suit--”

“If you’re alive to.” Apparently Sterber hadn’t thought of that. “What do you think’s going to happen when the Stock Exchange opens?”

“It’s going to be bad. But don’t worry; your father must have foreseen something like this. He gave me instructions, and instructed a few more people.” He named some of the Trisystem Investments people and some of the bankers. “We’re going to try to brace the market as long as we can. Nobody who keeps his head is going to lose anything in the long run.”

Luther Chen-Wong called from Port Carpenter, on Koshchei. He and Clyde Nichols and a young mathematics professor named Simon Macquarte had been running the colony, in Conn’s absence and since Yves Jacquemont had gone to space in the Ouroboros II.

“Well, they caught up with you,” he said. Evidently he had figured out what the search for Merlin was all about, too. “What do we do about it?”

“Well, we are just before finding Merlin, here. I hope we find it before things get too bad.” He told Luther the situation of the moment. “Have you people started on another hypership yet?”

“We’re getting organized to. I don’t suppose it’s advisable to send any more ships in to Storisende for a while? And are you sure this thing you’ve found is Merlin?”

“I don’t know what it is. It’s only big enough for the apparatus they’d need to operate a thing like Merlin--Yes, Luther. I am sure we have found Merlin.”

Chen-Wong looked at him curiously. “I hope so. I can’t think of anything else that can stop this business.”

Tom Brangwyn was in the room when he turned from the screen.

“We searched Leibert’s--Shanlee’s--rooms,” he said. “We found a bomb.”

“What kind of a bomb?”

“Vest-pocket thermonuclear. He seems to have gotten the fissionables by taking apart a couple of light tactical missiles; the whole thing’s packed inside a hundred-pound power-cartridge case. It was in a traveling-bag under his bed. And you know how it was to be fired? With a regular 40-mm flare-pistol, welded into the end of the bomb. The flare-powder had been taken out of the cartridge, and it had been reloaded with a big charge of rifle-powder. I suppose it would blow one subcritical mass into another. But the only way he could have fired the bomb would have been by pulling the trigger.”

And blowing himself up along with it. He must have wanted Merlin destroyed pretty badly.

“Have you questioned him yet?”

“Not yet. I wanted to tell you about it first.”

He looked at his watch. Only four hours had passed since the newscast; why, that seemed like months, ago, now.

“All right, Tom; we’ll go talk to him. Where’s the Colonel?”

Zareff was surrounded by a dozen screens, keeping in touch with the Lester Dawes and the gunboats and combat cars, and the gun positions with which he had ringed Force Command. It was only a little army, maybe, but he was a busy commander-in-chief.

“You take care of it. Tell me what you get from him. I can’t leave now. There’s a report of a number of aircraft approaching from the west now...”

They found Judge Ledue, and Kurt Fawzi and Dolf Kellton, who were just sitting around wishing there was something to do to help. They gave Franz Veltrin and Sylvie Jacquemont the job of keeping the representatives of the press amused. Then they went down to the room in which General Mike Shanlee was held under guard.

Shanlee, wearing a bathrobe and nothing else, was lying on a cot, sleeping peacefully; three of Zareff’s men were sitting on chairs, watching him narrowly.

“All right; you can go,” Conn told them. “We’ll take care of him.”

Shanlee woke instantly; he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

“You have my name and rank,” he said, and his voice no longer quavered. “My serial number is--” He recited a string of figures. “And that’s all you’re getting out of me.”

“We’ll get anything we want out of you,” Conn told him. “You know what a mind-probe is? You should; your accomplices used one on my father’s secretary. She’s a hopeless imbecile now. You’ll be, too, when we’re through with you. But before then, you’ll have given us everything you know.”

Kellton began to protest. “Conn, you can’t do a thing like that!”

“A mind-probe is utterly illegal; why, it’s a capital offense!” Ledue exclaimed. “Conn I forbid you...”

“Judge, don’t make me call those guards and have you removed,” Conn said.

“You can stop bluffing,” Shanlee told him. “Where would you get a mind-probe?”

“Out of the Chief of Intelligence’s office, here in his headquarters. I should imagine it was to be used in interrogating Alliance prisoners, during the War. I think Colonel Zareff would enjoy helping to use it on you. He used to be an Alliance officer.”

Shanlee was silent. Conn sat down in one of the chairs, at the small table.

“General Shanlee, would you describe General Foxx Travis as a man of honor and integrity? And would you so describe yourself?” Shanlee said nothing. “Yet both of you have lied, deliberately and repeatedly, to conceal the existence of Merlin. And we found that bomb in your room. You were willing to blow up this headquarters and everybody, yourself included, in it, to keep us from getting at Merlin. Well, you know that we can make you tell us the truth, maybe when it’s too late, and you know that we are going to get Merlin. We’re cutting the collapsium off that thing above now.”