It had been a long time since Zambendorf had seen real stars.
He and his team were assigned two places at the conference aboard the Shirasagi. He took Abaquaan with him. A NASO surface shuttle carried them up from Genoa Base along with deputations from the various other groups that had remained on Titan after the Orion's departure. Mackeson and a half dozen of his officers represented NASO, while Weinerbaum and three colleagues went on behalf of the professional scientists. Dave Crookes and John Webster were elected as spokesmen for the mix of engineers, technicians, and others from the various private laboratories and corporations. Colonel Short attended as senior officer of the military force, along with the commanders of the British and French detachments subordinate to him.
Nobody in charge, of course, thought to include the Taloids, whose home the war was being fought over and whose habitat was at that moment being seized. Zambendorf suggested it but was told it was impracticable because Taloids couldn't be accommodated inside the Shirasagi. When he pointed out that they could participate remotely via a communications link into Camelota device he had used himself more than oncethe answer came back that there would be no point, since it was all technical and the Taloids wouldn't understand what was going on.
Like the Orion, the Shirasagi used pulsed inertial fusion propulsion reacting on magnetic fields generated in an open-frame thrust chamber. The rest of the vessel forward of the radiation shield consisted of a number of modules interconnected by tubular and lattice beams, none of which contained a single area of regular living space large enough to house the gathering comfortably. Therefore, the conference took place in a hastily adapted cargo hold that had been freed up by the transfer of supplies and materiel down to the base the Japanese were building at Padua City.
Yakumo, tall and broad-shouldered, sporting a droopy Pancho Villa-style mustache and wearing the indigo blue of the Japanese Space Arm, sat in the center of a panel of his officers and staff on a slightly raised dais. The delegates from the surface installation filled the rest of the space, using an assortment of tables and chairs. A mild spin superimposed on the Shirasagi's freefall trajectory separated "up" from "down" and afforded a modicum of dignity appropriate to the occasion.
Yakumo opened with a short welcoming speech and introductions, followed by a reminderas if any were neededof what had brought them all together. Then Harold Mackeson assumed the task of summarizing to the assembly the events that had brought about the current situation, as well as anyone could reconstruct them. He did this partly to give the audience the benefit of his nonspecialist vantage point, partly in acknowledgment of his own overall technical responsibility, and partly to spare Weinerbaum the embarrassment of having the proceedings turned into a private confessional.
Yakumo listened expressionlessly until the Englishman was through. Then, when Mackeson finally set aside his notes and looked up, Yakumo slapped the tabletop in front of him in a slow, soundless motion and laid it all to rest with the simple rejoinder "So." It was his way of endorsing Mackeson's unspoken decision that recriminations and blame could wait until later. They were all in enough trouble as things were without letting strife among themselves add to the burden.
Yakumo repeated the main point that had emerged from it all. "The original belief was that these aliens were merely cooperating in delaying the Orion launch in order to frustrate the military operation. It is now clear that we were deceived and that their true aims were much more all along. Dr. Weinerbaum?"
"So it would appear," Weinerbaum agreed miserably.
A woman sitting beside Yakumo elaborated. "Instead, they've injected a self-propagating code into the Earthnet to bring down all systems."
"With what objective?" Colonel Short asked.
The scientist made a face and showed her palms. "It can only be to reduce Earth to a primitive condition comparable to that of the prenetwork era. It will make Earth incapable of projecting any influence beyond its own vicinity, let alone as far away as Titan."
Yakumo leaned back and surveyed the room. "It seems that Earth has become the victim of the strangest form of attack ever," he concluded. "An alien software virus that infects the planetary electronic organism in the same way a molecular virus invades the corporal chemical organism . . ." He paused for a moment to let the suggestion register, then asked, "For what purpose?" He looked around invitingly. There were no responses. "Dr. Weinerbaum?"
Weinerbaum just shook his head.
"Apparently nobody knows," the woman scientist observed.
Another of the Japanese spoke up. "Well, obviously to be left on their own and in full control here. The aliens want control of Titan's capabilities themselves."
"Well, maybe, but they won't be left quite on their own, will they?" Harold Mackeson reminded everybody. "We're still here. Where does everybody up in this ship and down on the surface figure in these aliens' plans?"
"We don't," somebody answered simply.
"Any more than the Taloids," another voice added.
"We are currently evaluating the logistics of getting everybody back to Earth," the chief engineering officer of the Shirasagi said. "It should be possible by a comfortable margin, and we can recompute a return course without help from Osaka."
"And then what?" Colonel Short asked.
The engineering chief looked taken by surprise. "I'm not sure I understand the question. I said I'm confident that we can get you all back to Earth, Colonel."
Short nodded. "I know you did. And I said, 'Then what?' " He glanced around briefly, then explained. "Okay, so we go home. And, like somebody just said, we leave them in monopoly control of everything out here at Titan." He shrugged as if the rest were too obvious. "How long until they come after us? And with what? There's enough down there for them to turn this whole moon into a production line for weapons we probably can't even imagine. Hell, isn't that what the whole thing was supposed to be in the first place, before it got all screwed up? And like somebody else just said, they've already put us back in the Stone Age to the point where Earth couldn't defend itself against an attack of school buses. So, like I said, after we're all back home and they've had time to get their act together and come after us . . . then what?"
It was the first time most of those present had fully realized what it all added up to.
People looked at each other with strained faces, muttering and shaking their heads. As the initial reactions subsided, Yakumo's gaze scanned the room, finally singling out Zambendorf and Abaquaan. "We have two gentlemen here of very different talents from most of the people present," he said. Zambendorf blinked and stared back in surpriseprivately he had been amazed even to have been invited up there at all. Yakumo went on. "You seem to possess a remarkable instinct for understanding alien minds and how to get through to them, Herr Zambendorf." The room fell silent with curiosity.
"I have had some success," Zambendorf replied. Normally he would have capitalized on the moment somehow and seized the opportunity to buff up his image a little, but this just wasn't the time.
"At the time of the landings from the Orion, I believe it was you who first established meaningful communication with the Taloids," Yakumo said.
"I . . . played a lucky hunch or two," Zambendorf suggested.
"But it was before the experts managed to achieve anything," Yakumo went on. "Do I take it that their hunches were not so lucky?"
"Er, everyone has their off days, I suppose."
"Well, a lot of people seem to have been having some serious off days lately," Yakumo said. In the front row facing him, Weinerbaum looked ill. Yakumo briefly raised some papers he had picked up from the table. "But it was yourself again, Herr Zambendorf, who not only deduced the existence of these latest aliens while being denied access to all the pertinent information but saw through their true designs before the experts so much as suspected them."
"Um, yes. Yes, I guess wemy colleagues all contributed . . . I guess we did," Zambendorf agreed slowly.
"So, another lucky hunch? Extraordinary."
The silence seemed to drag. "Perhaps alien natures aren't so different from human nature when you get to the bottom of it. And understanding human nature is my business," Zambendorf offered.
"Exactly."
Zambendorf became aware of Yakumo's eyes fixed on him pointedly. He glanced quickly from side to side, unsure if he might have missed something. "I'm sorry," he said, looking back at the mission chief. "What more do you want me to say?"
"Say?" Yakumo repeated. "I don't want you to say anything. Twice now, when it comes to dealing with aliens, you have shown an amazing ability to come up with the right answers when the experts have got it wrong. And this time the experts have screwed up royally. What I'm waiting for, Herr Zambendorf, is to know what you're going to do."
But all that Zambendorf could dojust at that moment, anywaywas stare back, glassy-eyed. For once in his life he found himself truly baffled.