Three minutes to go. No question of changing the speech now.
The question was, and had always been, the speech itself. Should thirty thousand crew be told what had arrived in Ramrobot Capsule #143? Could they be made to understand its importance? And--could such a secret be kept by that many?
Members of the Council had fought bitterly to prevent this event. Only Millard Parlette's sure control, his knowledge of the ways of power and the weaknesses of his fellow Council members, even his own striking authority-figure appearance, which he used ruthlessly--only Millard Parlette's determination had brought the Council to issue their declaration of emergency.
And now every crew on Alpha Plateau, and elsewhere, was before his teedee set. No cars flew above Alpha Plateau; no skiers glided down the snows of the northern glacier; the lake and the hot springs and the gambling halls of Iota were empty.
One minute to go. Too late to call off the speech.
Could thirty thousand people keep such a secret?
Why, no, of course they couldn't.
"That big house with the flat roof," said Harry Kane.
Matt tilted the car to the right. He continued, "I waited till the guards were out of sight, then went back to the vivarium. The man inside opened the door for me. I knocked him down and took his gun, found that bank of buttons and started pushing them."
"Land in the garden, not on the roof. Did you ever figure out what was wrong with their eyes?"
"No." Matt worked the slats and the steering knob, trying to get above the garden. It was big, and it ran to the void edge: a formal garden in a style a thousand years old, a symmetrical maze of right-angle hedges enclosing rectangles of brilliant color. The house too was all rectangles, an oversized version of the small identical-development-houses of the nineteens. Flat-roofed, flat-sided, nearly undecorated, the size of a motel but so wide it seemed low, the house seemed to have been built from prefabricated parts and then added to over the years. Geoffrey Eustace Parlette had evidently imitated ancient bad taste in hopes of getting something new and different.
Matt didn't see it that way, naturally. To him all the houses of Alpha were equally strange.
He brought the car down on the strip of grass at the void edge. The car landed, bounced, landed again. At what he judged was the proper moment, Matt pushed in all four fan levers. The car dropped jarringly. The levers tried to come out again, and Matt held them in with his hand, looking despairingly at Hood for help.
"Gyroscope," said Hood.
Matt forced his numb right arm to cross his torso and flick the Gyroscope switch.
"You need a little training in how to fly," Harry Kane said with admirable restraint. "You finished your story?" He had insisted that Matt talk without interruption.
"I may have forgotten some things."
"We can save the question-and-answer period until we get established. Matt, Laney, Lydia, get me out of here and move Jay in front of the dashboard. Jay, can you move your arms?"
"Yah. The stunner's pretty well worn off."
They piled out, Matt and the two women. Harry came out on his feet, moving in jerks and twitches but managing to stay upright. He brushed away offers of help and stood watching Hood. Hood had opened a panel in the dash and was doing things inside.
"Matt!" Laney called over her shoulder. She was standing inches from the void.
"Get back from there!"
"No! Come here!"
Matt went. So did Mrs. Hancock. The three of them stood at the edge of the grass, looking down into their shadows.
The sun was at their backs, shining down at forty-five degrees. The water-vapor mist which had covered the southern end of the Plateau that morning now lay just beyond the void edge, almost at their feet. And they looked into their shadows--three shadows reaching down into infinity, three contoured black tunnels growing smaller and narrower as they-bored through the lighted mist, until they reached their blurred vanishing points. But for each of the three it seemed that only his own shadow was surrounded by a small, vivid, perfectly circular rainbow.
A fourth shadow joined them, moving slowly and painfully. "Oh, for a camera," mourned Harry Kane.
"I never saw it like that before," said Matt.
"I did, once, a long time ago. It was like I'd had a vision. Myself, the representative of Man, standing at the edge of the world with a rainbow about his head. I joined the Sons of Earth that night."
A muted whirr sounded behind them. Matt turned to see the car slide toward him across the lawn, pause at the edge, go over. It hovered over the mist and then settled into it, fading like a porpoise submerging.
Harry turned and called, "All set?"
Hood knelt on the grass where the car had rested. "Right. It'll come back at midnight, wait fifteen minutes, then go back down. It'll do that for the next three nights. Would someone help me into the house?"
Matt half carried him through the formal garden. Hood was heavy; his legs would move, but they would not carry him. As they walked, he lowered his voice to ask, "Matt, what was that thing you drew on the door?"
"A bleeding heart."
"Oh. Why?"
"I'm not really sure. When I saw what they'd done to the guard, it was like being back in the organ banks. I remembered my Uncle Matt." His grip tightened in reflex on Hood's arm. "They took him away when I was eight. I never found out why. I had to leave something to show I was there--me, Matt Keller, walking in alone and out with an army. One for Uncle Matt! I was a little crazy, Hood; I saw something in the organ banks that would shake anyone's mind. I didn't know your symbol, so I had to make up my own."
"Not a bad one. I'll show you ours later. Was it bad, the organ banks?" ,
"Horrible. But the worst was those, tiny hearts and livers. Children, Jay! I never knew they took children."
Hood looked up questioningly. Then Lydia Hancock pushed the big front door open for them, and they had to concentrate on getting up the steps.
Jesus Pietro was furious.
He'd spent some time in his office, knowing he would be most useful there, but he'd felt cramped. Now he was at the edge of the carport watching the last of the sonic victims being carried away. He wore a beltphone; his secretary could reach him through that.
He'd never hated colonists before.
To Jesus Pietro, human beings came in two varieties: crew and colonist. On other worlds other conditions might apply, but other worlds did not intrude on Mount Lookitthat. The crew were masters, wise and benevolent, at least in the aggregate. The colonists were ordained to serve.
Both groups had exceptions. There were crew who were in no way wise and who did not work at being benevolent, who accepted the benefits of their world and ignored the responsibilities. There were colonists who would overthrow the established order of things and others who preferred to turn criminal rather than serve. When brought into contact with crew he did not admire, Jesus Pietro treated them with the respect due their station. The renegade colonists he hunted down and punished.
But he didn't hate them, any more than Matt Keller really hated mining worms. The renegades were part of his job, part of his working day. They behaved as they did because they were colonists, and Jesus Pietro studied them as biology students studied bacteria. When his working day ended, so did his interest in colonists, unless something unusual was going on.
Now that was over. In running amok through the Hospital, the rebels had spilled over from his working day into his very home. He couldn't have been angrier if they'd been in his house, smashing furniture and killing servants and setting poison for the housecleaners and pouring salt on the rugs.