Gardner did not look. Smee was shattered, crushed under the toll of his assignment. And the shattering had been for nothing… maybe.
“Why did they change their minds?” Smee asked.
“Some new information came to light. Information that made Lurion out to be a better place than it looks on first glance.”
“Lurion is hell,” Smee said thickly. “It should be destroyed.”
“So the computer says. But there’s new data to be considered. We can’t go blowing up worlds that might be salvaged.”
But Smee had lived with the thought of destruction for too long. It had seared channels into his brain. Now he could only shake his head and repeat, “It should be destroyed.”
Gardner felt a surge of pity, and he did not dare tell the other man that it was on his account that the project had been postponed. Smee would have only asked why the planet had not been blown up first, with the recomputation to come later. Gardner wondered whether the efficient medicos of Security would be able to repair this empty hulk of a man who had been sacrificed for nothing.
He concentrated on his piloting. Some hours later, the tiny vessel hung three quarters of a billion miles from Betelgeuse and three hundred million miles from Lurion. It was the conversion-point. Gardner jabbed down hard on the controls and the ship flicked out of normal space and into warp.
He wondered what kind of reception would be waiting for him on Earth.
Chapter XIV
Gardner stood at the entrance to the concentric series of offices that led inward to Security Chief Karnes’ office. He felt uncertain and tired. It was only hours since he had landed on Earth; Lori had gone to a hotel, Smee to the Security medical department. Gardner had not warned anyone of his return.
He was not in uniform, and he was conscious of his shabby, travelworn appearance as he presented himself at the front reception desk. The clerk, a recruit Security man, glanced up suspiciously.
“Yes?”
“I’d like to see Chief Karnes.”
“The Chief is in conference, sir. Do you have an appointment? I could ring him if—”
“No, I don’t have an appointment,” Gardner said wearily. “But he’ll see me if you tell him who I am. Ring him up and tell him Agent Gardner is here to see him and make a report.”
The receptionist frowned quizzically. “Very well. He’ll be free to take calls in half an hour. If you don’t mind waiting…”
“I do mind waiting,” Gardner said icily. “Call him now.”
“But—”
“Call him, you ninny, and don’t sit there yammering nonsense at me!” Gardner snapped.
Cowed, the receptionist shrank back into his cubicle and began plugging in phone-jacks. Gardner heard him talking to one clerk after another; Karnes was not an easy man to approach without an appointment. But at last he heard the receptionist say, “Agent Gardner is out here. He says he has a report to make.”
Karnes’ reply was loud and anguished enough for Gardner to hear it clearly. The receptionist poked his neck out and said, “Excuse me, but is that Agent Roy Gardner?”
“Yes, it is. Just back from Lurion.”
The receptionist relayed the information to Karnes. A moment later the youngster looked up dazedly at Gardner and said, “The Chief will see you immediately, Agent Gardner.”
The double doors opened and Gardner strode through. He knew his way; he had only been in Karnes’ office a handful of times, but the way to the Chief’s office was something no Security man ever forgot.
He came finally to the end of the long series of interlocking hallways and made the sharp left turn that put him in the vestibule of Karnes’ office. The scanning field bathed him for an instant; then the door rolled quickly back.
Karnes was standing at his desk when Gardner walked in: the first time in Gardner’s memory, and perhaps in all of recorded history, that Karnes had not been seated when a subordinate entered the room. Karnes’ thin face was frozen in an expression of shock and perplexity. His fleshless lips moved for a moment impotently before the Security Chief was able to get out the words:
“What the deuce are you doing here?”
“Reporting back to request a recomputation, sir,” Gardner said evenly.
Karnes sank limply into his chair and fixed hard, narrow eyes on Gardner. “Without orders? Without asking permission? Gardner, have you gone insane? What about the project?”
“Perhaps the project is better canceled, sir. I couldn’t give the order to proceed. There’s some additional information about Lurion that has to be figured into the computation before we can act.”
“This is incredible, Gardner,” Karnes said darkly. “You stand there to tell me that you abandoned your post and returned to Earth merely to let me know that you don’t think the computer was right? I—”
Gardner recklessly interrupted him. “Sir, I’ve been in the Corps long enough to know the consequences of what I’ve done. But I had to. The computer is wrong!”
“The computer spent three years formulating its decision, Gardner! We scoured Lurion for data, fed every relevant fact we could find into the programming.”
Gardner’s jaws clenched. “The computer was capable of sending out a traitor to take part in the project, though. It’s far from infallible.”
“What are you saying?”
“Your man Damon Archer. He showed up at my hotel with a hidden recorder and took down a full discussion of the project. Then he bolted. Luckily, he was stopped. But he was planning to sell that tape to the Confederacy of Rim Stars. Doesn’t speak well for the computer, does it, to pick such a man?”
Karnes’ face clouded even more. “Archer was screened as thoroughly as anybody we’ve ever selected for an assignment.”
“Exactly, sir. And still the computer made a mistake about him!”
The point should have been a telling one, but Karnes shrugged it off. “You should have requested a replacement for him. Under no condition should you-have come all the way back to Earth.”
“Archer wasn’t the only lemon. Smee was rapidly going psycho. I brought him back with me too.”
“In other words,” said Karnes, holding himself jn check with deadly calm, “you’ve smashed the entire project. Only Leopold and Weegan are still on Lurion. Or have you subverted them too?”
“They’re still there, but I gave them orders to hold things up. You see, sir, while I was waiting for the group to assemble, I met some of the Lurioni. I became involved with a group that’s dedicated to upsetting the present way of life there, to get into government and change things. There are over five hundred of them, and they’re growing more influential every day. It would be wrong to destroy the planet while there’s still hope for it, sir. If this group gets proper support—if we nurture it along—it ought to be possible to salvage Lurion without the need to blow it up. That is—”
“That’s enough, Gardner,” Karnes said in a low voice.
“But, sir—”
“Listen to me, Gardner. It’s close to five years since we first began to realize we had to destroy Lurion. Ever since that moment every man in the top levels of government here has lived with a weight of responsibility on his back. We’ve checked and rechecked. There’s no room for error. The war drive on Lurion is unstoppable. It’s going to reach a head in sixty-seven years and the top will blow off—unless we stop things right now.
“You say Smee cracked up after only six months. How about us, Gardner? We’ve been living with this thing for years! Wrecking a world isn’t something you undertake lightly. We’ve checked, rechecked, doublechecked. We reached our decision.