With no further word, ignoring the polite objections of Quentin Bent, the Shmoos rose, backed away from the table, and passed through the hatchway. Desert heat once again beat in on the men in the trailer before the hatch closed.
Stunned by the sudden end of the interview, they simply stared at each other. Bent was on the edge of tears.
“All right,” he said, standing. He glanced at the TV monitor perched high in one corner. Cameras conveyed the Shmoos’ return to the Rock. “We’ll see—”
A sharp crack and a roar rocked the trailer. Arthur fell from his chair in seeming slow motion, bumping into Rotterjack’s chair, thinking on the way down, It’s begun. He landed on hands and butt and quickly got to his feet, pulling on a table leg. Bent pointed to the monitor, still functioning though vibrating in its mount. The Shmoos were gone.
“They blew up,” he said. “I saw it. Did anybody else see it — on the screen? They just exploded!”
“Jesus,” Rotterjack said.
“Is somebody shelling them?” Forbes asked, looking sharply at Rotterjack and Arthur.
“God knows,” Bent said. They scrambled outside the trailer and followed a raggedly organized team of scientists and soldiers down the path to where the Shmoos had last been seen. Fifty meters down the path to the Rock, three craters had been gouged in the dirt, each about two meters in diameter. The robots had left no sign — neither fragments nor burn marks.
Quentin Bent stood hunched over with hands on his knees, sobbing and cursing as he looked up across the blinding noonday plain at the Rock. “What happened? What in bloody hell happened?”
“There’s nothing left,” Forbes said. French nodded vigorously, his face beet red. Both kept glancing at the Americans: their fault.
“Do you know?” Bent asked loudly, turning on him. “Is this some goddamned American thing?”
“No,” Arthur said.
“Airplanes, rockets…” Bent was almost incoherent.
“We didn’t hear any aircraft…” French said.
“They destroyed themselves,” Arthur said quietly, walking around the craters, careful not to disturb anything.
“That’s bloody impossible!” Bent screamed.
“Not at all.” Arthur felt deeply chilled, as if he had swallowed a lump of dry ice. “Have you read Liddell Hart?”
“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Bent shouted, fists clenched, approaching Arthur and then backing away, without apparent aim. Rotterjack stayed clear of the men and the craters.
“Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s Strategy.”
“I’ve read it,” Rotterjack said.
“You’re crazy,” French said. “You’re all bleeding crazy!”
“We have the incident on tape,” Forbes said, holding up his hands to calm his colleagues. “We must review it. We can see if any projectile or weapon struck them.”
Arthur knew very well he was not crazy. It was making sense to him now. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll explain when everybody’s in a better frame of mind.”
“Fuck that!” Bent said, regaining some composure. “I want the physics group out here immediately. I want a message sent to the Rock now. If there’s a war beginning here, let’s not give the impression we started it.”
“We’ve never sent or received transmissions from the Rock,” Forbes said, shaking his head.
“I do not care. Send transmissions, as many frequencies as we can handle. This message: ‘Not responsible for destruction of envoys.’ Got that?”
Forbes nodded and returned to the trailer to relay the orders.
“Mr. Gordon, I’ll try very hard to put myself in a suitable frame of mind. What the hell has strategy to do with this?” Bent asked, standing on the opposite side of the three craters.
“The indirect approach,” Arthur said.
“Meaning?”
“Never come at your adversary from an expected direction, or with your goals clear.”
Bent, whatever his state of mind, caught on quickly. “You’re saying this has all been a ruse?”
“I think so.”
“But then your Guest is a ruse, too. Why would they tell us they’re going to destroy the planet, and then make that seem like a sham…tell us they’re going to save us, and that’s a sham, too?”
“I don’t know,” Arthur said. “To confuse us.”
“Goddammit, man, they’re powerful beyond our wildest dreams! They build mountains overnight, travel across space in huge ships, and if what you say is true, they dismantle whole worlds — why bother to deceive us? Do we send greetings to bleeding ants’ nests before we trample them?”
Arthur could not answer this. He shook his head and held up his hands. The heat made him dizzy. Oddly — or not so oddly — what worried him most now was how the President would react when he learned what had happened here.
“We have to talk to Hicks first,” he told Rotterjack as they climbed aboard a truck to be taken back to the outer perimeter.
“Why? Aren’t we all in enough trouble already?”
“Hicks…might be able to explain things to the President. In a way he’ll listen to.”
Rotterjack lowered his voice to a whisper in the back of the vehicle. “All hell’s going to break loose. McClennan and Schwartz and I will have a real fight…Whose side are you on?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you voting for Armageddon, or do we have a chance?”
Arthur started to reply, then shut his mouth and shook his head.
“Crockerman’s going to flip when he hears about this,” Rotterjack said.
Arthur called Oregon from Adelaide’s airport while waiting for the Army limo to pick up the United States group. He was exhausted from the day and the long flight back. It was early in the morning in Oregon and Francine answered with a voice full of sleep.
“Sorry to wake you,” Arthur said. “I’m not going to be able to call for a couple of days,”
“It’s lovely to hear from you. I love you.”
“Miss you both desperately. I feel like a man cut loose. Nothing is real anymore.”
“What can you tell me?”
“Nothing,” Arthur said, pinching his cheek lightly.
“Well, then, I’ve got something to tell you. Guess who called?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Who? Not—”
“You guessed it. Chris Riley. He told me to write it down. ‘Two new unusual objects the size of asteroids have been discovered, each about two hundred kilometers in diameter. They have the albedo of fresh ice — almost pure white. They are traveling in highly unusual orbits — both hyperbolic. They may or may not be huge, very young comets.’ Does this make any sense to you? He said it might.”
“Fragments of Europa?”
“Isn’t this romantic?” Francine asked, still sleepy. “He said you might think that.”
“Go on,” Arthur said, his sensation of unreality increasing.
She continued to read the message. “’If they are fragments of Europa, they are traveling along virtually impossible paths, widely separated. One of them will rendezvous with Venus next year, when Venus is at…’ Just a second. Got another page here…’at superior conjunction. The other will rendezvous with Mars in late 1997.’ Got that?”
“I think so,” Arthur said.
“Marty’s asleep, but he told me to tell you that Gauge will now sit and heel at his command. He’s very proud of that. Also, he’s finished all the Tarzan books.”
“Attaboy.” His eyes closed for a moment and he experienced a small blackout. “Sweetheart, I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to fall over if I don’t get to sleep shortly.”
“We both hope you’re home soon. I’ve gotten used to having you around the house. It seems empty now.”