Not Boyle, though. “Mr. Kiernan has a point,” he said deliberately. “Let’s not raise any false hopes. Those who stay behind will stay for good, unless Earth gets some kind of communication going with the Cygnans.”
He turned to Klein. “And we’re not going to jeopardize their safety by initiating hostile action. I want that clearly understood. This is an escape attempt, not a military action. The decision to attack these aliens with nuclear weapons is one that can only be made on Earth. You couldn’t do anything except antagonize the creatures. How many missiles do you think you could get off before they retaliated? And how any missiles do you think would get to their targets when they can match velocities freehand on those broomsticks of theirs?”
“I don’t know,” Klein admitted. “But we can inflict as much damage on the enemy as we can before we leave.”
Jameson had heard enough. Before Gifford realized what he was up to, Jameson gave him a shove that bowled him over. The Chinese strongarm made a swipe with his fistful of artificial rock, but missed. In the low gravity, Jameson vaulted to the ledge and ended up standing beside Boyle.
“Captain,” he said. “Before you go along with this, you’d better listen to what Dr. Ruiz has to say.”
“Shut up,” Klein said.
Yeh made a move toward Ruiz, but Boyle said sharply, “Hold it right there. I think we all better hear this.”
Yeh halted, and Klein lost the chance to control the situation. The crowd had started rustling again, straining to get close. Klein evidently was nervous about the impression that rough stuff might make.
“The Cygnans are going to leave this system in about six days,” Ruiz said.
There was a moment of shocked silence; then pandemonium broke out. When it died down, Mike Berry shouted, “You told us they’d be here for over three thousand years!”
Ruiz passed a hand wearily over his eyes. “That was the averaged figure,” he said. “It still holds. But Earth seems to be one of the exceptions.”
“You withheld this information?” Boyle asked in a hard voice.
“Yes. I had very good reasons.”
“Captain, this was my doing,” Jameson began.
“We’ll discuss that later,” Boyle said. “You said you had reasons. Go on.”
“Discussion’s ended,” Klein said, raising his little gun. “I already know all about it.”
Ruiz looked at the gun with pointed contempt. “How do you know?” he said. “Have the two of you been planting your eavesdropping devices around this enclosure?”
Chia broke in breathlessly, half addressing the crowd. “Six days, sure! Means we must hurry! No time left!”
“Shoot if you’re going to,” Ruiz snapped. “Otherwise put the silly thing down.”
“I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt for the moment, Dr. Ruiz,” Boyle said harshly, “but don’t try my patience. We’re all waiting to hear your explanation.”
Ruiz took his time about it. He ran through his computations in a dry lecture-hall voice. “So we can be reasonably certain,” he finished, “that if the Cygnan fleet is allowed to leave on schedule, Earth will escape with no more than a bad case of the surface hiccups. But if Mr. Klein and his overzealous friends manage to delay the Cygnan departure by as much as a month, the human race stands a good chance of being seriously depleted, or entirely wiped out. In the worst case, the Earth would fall into the sun.”
“You don’t know,” Boyle temporized. “You’re only guessing. There’s no way of predicting how long the Cygnans might be delayed. Earth could be at the other side of its orbit.”
“The Cygnan route crosses Earth’s orbit twice—on opposite sides of it. The combined strike zone adds up to at least one hundred twenty degrees out of three hundred and sixty. At least! Are you a gambling man, Captain? Do you want to bet that the human race has a two-to-one chance of staying alive?”
Boyle was silent a long time. He stood in his bulldog position, his lower lip thrust out, a frown on his wide forehead.
“We’re wasting time,” Klein said. “In about six hours that overhead plumbing’s going to be filled with those vermin-ridden snakes.”
Heads swiveled involuntarily to fix on the darkened tubes that twisted through the zooscape. Some of them looped down almost to ground level. They’d been pried and hammered and hacked at by some of the more belligerent younger men, but nobody had been able to so much as scratch them.
So many people in the crowd missed Boyle’s first step toward Klein. The captain’s hand was extended. “We’re not going anywhere,” Boyle said in a level voice. “That’s an order. I’ll take that gun now.”
Klein actually began backing away. “Don’t make waves, Captain,” he said. “We can get along without you if we have to.”
Jameson tensed, gauging his distance from Klein, from Yeh and Chia. The others were too far away to bother about. A few yards away he could see Mike Berry stirring uneasily.
“Hand it over,” Boyle said, and lunged forward, making a grab for it.
There was a fluttering sound in the thin air, like someone riffling the pages of a book, and Boyle was suddenly writhing on the ground, his leg almost severed at the knee.
A woman screamed, and there was a general scramble among the spectators to get out of the way. Jameson, off balance, fought to stay still.
Klein swung the tiny gun around in an arc. “Anybody else?” he said.
Boyle was still conscious, but looked as if he was going into shock. The sliver-sized microflechettes had stitched across his leg, almost blowing it off. Blood spurted from the pulpy mess, black in the chalky light.
Down in the struggling throng, the voice of Janet Lemieux sounded, high, clear, and indignant. “You get out of my way, Jack Gifford! Move!” In a moment she was kneeling next to the captain, taking off her blouse and making a tourniquet out of it. She looked up impatiently. “Somebody get me my medical bag,” she ordered. “Hurry!” The kit had been among the priority items Jameson had managed to bring back with him that morning.
Klein and his gang had drawn into a tight, cohesive group and were edging their way from the scene along the broad apron of the terrace. They’d made a mess of it, and they knew it. People got out of their way hastily, parting to let them through. Jameson watched them go, along the rim of the stepped bowl, all the way to the opposite side, toward the entrance. He could see their forms, tiny and dim, gathered in a circle, having some kind of conference.
Maggie had found him again. She hung on to his arm, “Tod, what’s going to happen?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Janet was thumbing back one of Boyle’s eyelids, looking at it with a coldlight stick. She’d got Maybury to help her. The little astronomy tech was elevating a plastic bag with a tube leading down to a needle in Boyle’s arm.
“Is he going to lose the leg?” Jameson inquired, bending over.
Janet gave him a look of tight fury. “Probably,” she said. “And there’s no way to clone a new one for him here.”
Maybury said, her voice shaking, “Isn’t there anything you can do, Commander?”
Jameson shook his head. “I could rally some of the men. We could arm ourselves with the garden tools and pipes from the hydroponics equipment. But Klein has the upper hand. We can’t get near him with that automatic weapon of his. Those things have a range of a couple of hundred yards in this gravity, and aim doesn’t count.”
“But you’ve got to stop them! They’re crazy!”
Ruiz limped over and rested a hand on Maybury’s shoulder. She looked up at him with quick gratitude.