“Blake here. Any news from Lunar One?”
“As of this time, no, sir. We’ll flash you as soon as—hold on—Yes. One coming up now—projecting!”
Blake shook Forbin’s shoulder roughly. “Come on, man! The Lunar report!”
Forbin stirred, unwillingly.
The teletype was clattering at frantic speed.
FROM LUNAR OBSERVATORY ONE REPETITION OF REPORT TIMED 0857GMT BEGINS TWO CONTACTS REGISTERED MOMENTARILY AT 0843GMT STOP OUT OF MARTIAN ORBIT BUT OBSERVATION TOO BRIEF TO ESTABLISH COURSE ENDS
The silence in the Sanctum was electric.
Blake broke it. He called his office. “Get me Lunar One! No—wait! Get me the top man on astronomy!”
“Sorry, boss. All our records are locked up in Colossus.” Forbin laughed hysterically.
“Get Lunar One on line, then! Absolute priority! Sonic will do—don’t bother about a visual link!”
“Check: Lunar One, absolute priority!” The voice was scared. “That is affirmative.” Blake straightened up, breathing noisily. “We mustn’t panic; this could be nothing—couldn’t it?” His pride was unable to keep the note of appeal out of his voice.
It got a single, comfortless word from Forbin. “Maybe.”
Blake paced up and down the Sanctum several times. He stopped, all vestiges of his former Napoleonic image gone. “Goddamnit! What in hell can they want?” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Colossus is no longer a threat—they must know that! Come on, Charles!” He was pleading: “Please—think! They must know Colossus is busted!”
Forbin forced his mind away from Cleo. “Oh, yes. I think you can bank on that. I cannot work it out—to be honest, I can’t be bothered—but I think you will find a significant correlation between the time Colossus died and the time of that Lunar observation.”
Blake could be bothered. He did the few sums necessary in his head. “Yeah—you could be right—but I make it a reaction time of not more than five minutes! That’s impossibly fast!”
“Sloppy thinking, Blake! You assume they have our time—scale, work at our speed. Further, you do not allow for them being ready, only needing the news of Colossus’ death to go into action.”
“But what do they want?” Blake repeated. “If you’re right, they are certainly aware that Colossus is finished, no threat to them or anything else!”
Forbin’s haggard face smiled coldly. “Living in an ivory tower has its points. From mine, I see one answer that seems to have escaped you. You could be one hundred and eighty degrees out of phase. It is possible that the threat was not to the Martians, but from them!” He was suddenly bitter. “It could be that Colossus appreciated the threat, was preparing to meet it—don’t forget that extension we didn’t understand—and could have met it. Only you, the Fellowship, and me were played for suckers by the Martians.”
Blake took all this in silence. It made the most horrible sense. “But why,” he said at last, “why didn’t Colossus tell us? Why?”
“If you can’t pay the rent, d’you talk to the dog about it? Why should Colossus tell us?” He flashed into anger. “To use a favorite expression of yours—goddamnit, why should he? Without extra capacity, power, he couldn’t handle it. What possible chance could we stand?” He laughed sarcastically. “You snap out of it, Blake! We were ants beneath the feet of giants! Now, I greatly fear we’re still ants—beneath the feet of one, hostile giant. Not that I, personally, greatly care. I’ve lost Cleo. I know that.”
Blake ignored, if he even heard, the last part. “We could reactivate Colossus.”
“Rubbish! Use your brain! Neither you nor I have the faintest conception of the damage! Don’t forget, I listened to Colossus dying! I think you would find the vast bulk of the circuitry burned out, finished! It could take months, years to even assess the damage—and that would be a tricky operation. No one knows which bit contained the missile controls. We could blast the entire globe into dust, just looking! And checking, at best, would take months of exploration, testing. We have only weeks, and if the Martians have a time—warp device, it could be a lot less. A whole lot less.”
“Aw, c’mon, you can’t imagine… .”
“I don’t just rely on imagination. Lunar One only got a fleeting observation of those two contacts—try to work out why!”
“I can’t stand this,” cried Blake. He called his office. “What in hell’s holding up that Lunar call?”
“Sorry, sir. We’re doing all we can, but there’s some trouble. We’re receiving okay, but we don’t appear to be radiating. We’ve checked all the way to aerial loading. So far, we can’t find the fault. We’re rechecking.”
Forbin’s interest was awakened. “You’ve no idea what’s wrong?”
“No, Director. It looks fine, but… .”
Briefly, Forbin regained some degree of control. “Set broadband reception watch on one hundred to two hundred megahertz. Pipe it here.”
“Yes, sir!”
Blake looked puzzled, but his expression changed to alarm as he got Forbin’s idea.
Forbin gave him a tight little smile. For the first time in hours he got out his pipe and began filling it. “Just wait, Blake. I could be wrong.”
“Director, sir. Coming up now on speaker four, broadband on one to two hundred megahertz. You’re on!”
Forbin reached for a volume control. A faint hiss filled the room.
The projector flashed a new message.
FROM COMMANDER USNAN FLASH FLEET CONTROLS NEW YORK STOP UNITED NATIONS ACCEPT YOUR ORDERS REQUEST INSTRUCTIONS ENDS
Forbin pointed at the projection with the stem of his pipe. “Well, there you are! Make the most of it. You could be the world’s most short-lived dictator!” Forbin’s voice was drained of emotion; he could have been lecturing. “You know, Blake, that’s our planet’s leitmotiv: you, me, Colossus—and all the rest. We so nearly made it!” He pressed the cancel button, and with the disappearance of the bright projection, he realized that the light was fading. Night was coming.
Blake slumped in the armchair, much as Forbin had done earlier. Both men listened to the hiss of the radio.
“It is negative, yet positive evidence,” observed Forbin calmly. “One hundred megs is a fair spread—yet where are the local stations? They should be piled one on top of another.”
Blake did not answer.
Then all doubts were resolved, all lingering hopes destroyed. Both men had heard that voice; neither could possibly forget it. But there was one difference: it was stronger, louder.
“FORBIN. FORBIN. FORBIN. WE ARE COMING. WE ARE COMING. DO NOT TOUCH COLOSSUS. WE ARE COMING… . “
Blake sprang from his chair, crying out. Forbin remained still. He had passed his final crisis when Cleo had gone from his sight, now he was on that broad, calm river, flowing to nothingness… .
“Give my love to Billy,” she had said—and nothing more. Again, the dry rustling voice filled the room.
“FORBIN. FORBIN. FORBIN. WE ARE COMING. WE ARE COMING… .”