“There’s one other thing.” She checked the bank of meters and alarms in front of her, then raised her eyes somberly. “They’re protecting the supply missiles with a decoy. The missiles will be sitting ducks if spotted, so the plan is to keep the secessionists busy-” She broke off and leaned forward urgently, sweat showing at her hairline. “Titus, three men died bringing this information across the surface from Luna Station, on foot, because they didn’t dare broadcast it or attract attention with vehicles. We’ve got a leak on this station. If you breathe a word.”
A traitor. He wasn’t surprised. Between the rescues of crashed secessionists and now some W.S. messengers there could even be another assassin on the station. “I won’t say anything. Do I have to know about the decoy?”
“Yes. For the timing. It’s all there for you, but not the reasons why it has to be so precise. A surface convoy just like what they’ve been trying to get through to us will be timed to draw enemy fire just before the ”tainers are to arrive. The decoy will be loaded with explosives. The `tainers must arrive on time and on target. If they hit the station, we’re dead. If they hit too near the decoy which will be set to blow, we lose the supplies, the war, and our lives. The blockaders need supplies, too. They’ll be on that decoy to capture, not just destroy. This is a gigantic, tightly planned, high-precision operation. You can’t improvise. You can’t create or embroider. You must do precisely what you are instructed, exactly as demanded.
“Do you understand this, Titus? It all depends on you.”
“I can see that.”
“Good. Let me know when you’re ready to transmit the data. And don’t forget the time lag.”
He just looked at her.
Embarrassed, she grimaced. “Yes, well, everybody else forgets the time lag.”
He went to work on it immediately, and it wasn’t nearly as difficult as it sounded. The W.S. planners had in fact thought of everything, even the problems caused by computing on the moon and launching from Earth. They must have been planning this since I first suggested it. But he was also sure that the suggestion had been so obvious that others must have thought of it before he did.
Inea was curious about his activities, but he told her truthfully he was reopening communications with the Resident operatives who could ship him blood. Shimon hung over his shoulder until he convinced the Israeli that he was going over Wild Goose’s data again, just for the hell of it.
Then Abbot caught Titus dismantling the Eighth’s console in the observatory, getting ready to connect his black box. “Titus, what are you doing?” he demanded.
“Spying on you, what else?”
Abbot hunkered down to peer into the mechanism, hands dangling over his knees. “You don’t seem to have done any damage. Listen, whatever you do, don’t use the Eighth to send any sort of signal. I’m only getting fragments of messages because I haven’t been aiming the antennas, but I’m convinced that the blockaders believe the Eighth is dead. If anything moves out there, they’ll bomb it. If they pick up any kind of signal from it, they’ll bomb it. It’s too valuable to lose, Titus. Don’t risk it.”
“Do you really think they’d destroy something so valuable? I don’t believe they think it’s dead. They’ve decided to spare it because it’s the last operational one.”
Abbot studied Titus for a moment, then edged closer. “All right, listen. My-friends-among the blockaders have reported that the Eighth is dead, and so it’s being overlooked. After their triumphant destruction of the probe, the secessionists feel they are winning, Titus, and they are! If they take over, there will be no money for rebuilding your orbital observatories or Arrays or anything. We’ve got to save what we can, so don’t energize or aim the Array.”
“I understand the situation,” said Titus.
Two hours later, he had connected the Eighth console to his black box, slaved to the special channel they’d use to communicate with Earth.
At the first opportunity, Titus reported to Colby that Abbot believed the blockaders considered the Eighth dead. “I’m not so sure we should go ahead with this. We’ll have to aim and energize the Array twice, once to send the launch data, and once to correct the orbit. If Abbot’s right, it could cost us the Array and our only way of intercepting blockaders’ communications.”
“Abbot’s project didn’t save the probe, and the Array isn’t really the right tool for signaling Earth. If we lose it, science loses a lot but our strategic position won’t be that much worse. The other antenna mast is almost finished and might be powerful enough to reach Earth without a relay.” Colby couldn’t ask Earth for a decision, so she paced around her desk like a caged animal several times before she finally told Titus, “We’ve got ta risk the Array. With the diversions planned, it’s possible they’ll never notice.”
As the sun rose over the station, Titus’s vitality sank, and he forced himself to check and recheck everything for fatigue errors. But a few days later, he had the tabulations ready for transmission with every eventuality covered. He also had a test message ready for Connie, with a full report set to dump if she returned the code signal. It was a risk. If ground control at the ballistic launch site caught the interference their computers were filtering out of Titus’s signal and realized that it, itself, was a signal, it could blow the entire operation because they’d think it was the secessionists breaching security. The resulting tightening of security could ruin all of Connie’s plans.
Just before the transmission time, Colby cordoned off Titus’s lab, filling it with Brink’s auditors, claiming that they had to keep up with their paperwork. This attracted no attention because the auditors had been working constantly, all over the station, and since the blockade, Colby had been using them to keep people too busy to brood.
With that security in place, Titus wanted to make sure his black box was functioning properly, so he pulled the console apart to go over all the connections. It was only then that he found one board he couldn’t account for. At first he thought fatigue was dulling his mind, but when he couldn’t find that board on any circuit diagram, he realized he’d found Abbot’s alternative transmitter-or, at the very least, his means of communicating with the Tourists.
“Something wrong, Dr. Shiddehara?” asked a guard.
“Uh, no, just have to replace this. Intermittent short.” He wasn’t challenged as he deposited the board in his office and brought forth another, wholly meaningless, one which he inserted without connecting it to anything.
On Colby’s command, Titus sent his calculations, tying in local weather predictions at the launch site and known orbital movements of the blockade ships. The media had surmised that the blockaders were preparing to take Luna Station, the last bastion of World Sovereignties on the moon’s surface.
As planned, Titus got no acknowledgment that his data had been received, only the computer’s tedious, digit by digit handshake with groundside. The data went somewhere, but he had no way of knowing who got it.
As they waited for the launch hour, and the moment when Titus would have the chance to correct errors in the orbit, Titus went into his office to pocket Abbot’s device. He didn’t expect to be searched on the way out, but if so, he’d just say he was taking lr to the shop to get the short fixed. Checking the console, he round that Connie had solicited his report with her proper code, and in return his black box had captured a brief note from her.
“Next caravan from Luna Station has supply for you. Stay on ton of A. We’re doing our best.”
Heart pounding, he began to enter a warning to divert her efforts to the “tainers, and then realized that the `tainers were already buttoned up, and no doubt the decoy caravan was now loading at Luna Station. It’s too late. Whatever miracles had been pulled off, whatever sacrifices had bought those miracles the blood would be destroyed when the convoy blew up in the blockaders’ faces.