"A temporary aberration," Broghuilio replied. "Underneath nothing has changed. We altered the more recent development so that you would not be misled. A final solution to the problem was still called for."
Heller was thinking rapidly as she listened. The "final solution" had to mean that the Jevlenese had used Earth’s belligerence as an excuse to maintain their own military forces as she had suspected. It seemed to support another line of thought that her researches had caused her to wonder about, and here was an opportunity to test it. But to do so she would have to resort to bluff again. "I challenge that explanation," she said. "What I have described so far is only part of what the Jevlenese have been doing." All the heads in the room turned toward her. "By the time of the nineteenth century, it was obvious that Western civilization was rapidly spreading science and industrial technology across the globe in spite of all their efforts. At that point the Jevlenese changed their tactics. They actually began to stimulate and accelerate scientific discovery by leaking information in various quarters that precipitated major breakthroughs." She turned her head a fraction. "Dr. Hunt. Would you like to comment, please?"
Hunt had been expecting the question. He stood up and said, "The sharp discontinuities and nonlinearities that attended the major breakthroughs in physics and mathematics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been a mystery for a long time. In my opinion, such conceptual revolutions could not have happened in the time they did without some external influence."
"Thank you," Heller said. Hunt sat down. She looked back at the Thuriens, more than a few of whom appeared puzzled. "Why would the Jevlenese do such a thing when their policy up until then had been to retard their rival? Because they were forced to accept the fact that they would not be able to keep Earth back any longer. Therefore, if Earth was about to become a high-technology planet anyway, the Jevlenese decided to use their already established infrastructure of influence to steer that advancement in such a direction that their rival would eliminate itself. In other words they set out to engineer events in such a way that the sciences which they themselves had helped develop would be used not to eradicate the scourges that had plagued mankind throughout history, but to wage war on a global scale and with unprecedented ferocity." She watched Broghuilio carefully as she spoke, and saw that she had hit the mark. Now was the moment to go for the kill.
"Deny that it was Jevlenese agents who infiltrated the European nobility at the end of the nineteenth century and created the rash of internecine jealousies that culminated in the horrors of the First World War," she challenged in a suddenly loud and cutting voice. "Deny that it was a Jevlenese-controlled organization that seized control of Russia after the 1917 revolution and developed the prototype for the totalitarian police state. And deny that you set up a Jevlenese group in the wreckage of postwar Germany to resurrect the hatreds that the League of Nations was formed to resolve by peaceful means. They were led by some very carefully selected and trained individuals, weren’t they? What happened to the real Adolf Hitler? Or perhaps you operated from behind the throne-Alfred Rosenberg, perhaps?" The three Jevlenese did not have to say anything. Their frozen postures and stunned expressions provided all the confirmation needed. Heller turned her head toward the Thuriens and explained, "World War II was supposed to be nuclear. The necessary scientific, political, social, and economic prerequisites had all been taken care of. It didn’t quite work as planned, but it came frighteningly close."
A new wave of mutterings broke out among the Thuriens. Heller waited for it to subside and then concluded in a quieter voice, "The tensions continued for over half a century, but despite the continuing Jevlenese efforts, the global catastrophe that they sought never quite took place." The next part was pure guesswork, but she continued without any change of tone. "They concluded that one day they would have to confront their rival themselves, and so embarked on a program of exaggerating Earth’s wars and armament developments to justify to the Thuriens their creation of a ‘protective’ strength of their own. At the same time they reversed their policy on Earth and used their network to defuse tensions, promote disarmament, and permit its people to develop their talents and resources creatively in the ways they had always wanted to. The object of this, of course, was to turn Earth into a defenseless target. To maintain the justification for increasing their own armed forces, they supplied the Thuriens with what gradually became a total fantasy manufactured inside JEVEX."
Heller paused again, but this time there was no sound. She wheeled around to point at the Jevlenese, and her voice rose to an accusing shout. "They accuse us of killing each other, when all the time they know full well that their agents have orchestrated the worst episodes of havoc and bloodshed in Earth’s history. They have murdered more people than all the leaders of planet Earth put together." Her voice fell to an ominous whisper. "But the unexpected arrival of the Shapieron threw all those plans into confusion. Here was a group of Ganymeans who would expose the lie if they were allowed to make contact with Thurien. Now we see the real reason why its existence was never disclosed." The color was draining from Broghuilio’s face. Wylott had turned scarlet and seemed to be having difficulty breathing, while on Broghuilio’s other side Estordu was dripping with perspiration and shaking visibly. Across the room Garuth, Shilohin, and Monchar were sitting forward tensely as they sensed the moment approaching for them to reveal themselves.
"And now we come to the question of the Shapieron ," Heller said. Her tone was almost soft, but menace was glittering in her eyes as she fixed them upon the Jevlenese. "We heard earlier a suggestion that Earth had sabotaged it. The suggestion is based on what we have seen to be lies. The Shapieron was never in any jeopardy at any time during the six months it was on Earth. On the contrary, our relationship with the Ganymeans was very friendly. We have ample records to prove that." She paused for a second. "But we do not have to rely on those records to prove that Earth did nothing to harm that ship or its occupants. We have far more convincing evidence than that." Across the room Garuth and his companions stiffened. Calazar was about to give the instruction to VISAR.
And the Jevlenese vanished.
The floor where they had been standing was suddenly empty. Surprised murmurs broke out on all sides. After a few seconds VISAR announced, "JEVEX is cutting all its links. I have no access to it at all. It is ignoring requests to reconnect."
"What do you mean?" Calazar asked. "You have no communications to Jevlen at all?"
"The whole planet is isolating itself," VISAR replied. "All the Jevlenese worlds are disconnecting. JEVEX has detached and become an independent system. No further conununications or visits within its operating zone are possible."
The consternation breaking out among the Thuriens meant that something very unusual was happening. Hunt turned to meet an inquiring look from Danchekker and shrugged. "It looks as if JEVEX has broken off diplomatic relations," he said.
"What do you suppose it means?" Danchekker asked.
"Who knows? It sounds like a siege. They’re inside their own zone controlled by JEVEX, and JEVEX isn’t talking to anyone. So I guess that short of sending ships in there’s no way anyone can get at them now."
"It might not be that easy," Lyn said from Hunt’s other side. "If they’ve been setting themselves up as a Galactic police force, there could be a problem there."
A strange silence fell over the Thuriens. Calazar and Showm looked uneasily at each other; Eesyan looked down and fiddled awkwardly with his knuckles. The Terrans and the Shapieron Ganymeans looked at them curiously. Eventually Calazar looked up with a sigh. "Your demonstration of how to get truth from the Jevlenese was remarkable. You were wrong on one of your assumptions, however. We have never agreed to any proposal by the Jevlenese that they maintain a military force either to counter possible aggressive expansionism by Earth or for any other reason."
Heller didn’t seem too reassured by the statement as she sat down. "You know now what they’re like," she said. "How can
you be certain that they haven’t been secretly arming themselves?"
"We can’t," Calazar admitted. "If they have, the implications of the situation that would confront both of our civilizations are serious."
Caldwell was puzzled. He frowned for a moment as if to check over what was going through his mind, stared at Heller for a second, then looked across at Calazar. "But we assumed that was why they invented the phony stories," he said. "If that wasn’t the reason, then what was?"
The Thuriens looked even more uncomfortable. Showm turned to Calazar and spread her hands as if conceding there was something that couldn’t be concealed any longer. Calazar hesitated, then nodded. "It is clear to us now why the Jevlenese falsified their reports," Showm said, turning her head to address the whole room. An expectant hush fell as she paused. She took a long breath and resumed, "There is more to this, which up until now we have felt it wiser not to talk about. . ." She turned her head momentarily sideways to glance at Garuth and his colleagues, "to any of you." They waited. She went on, "For a long time the Ganymeans have been haunted by the specter of Minerva repeating itself, and this time possibly spilling out into the Galaxy. Just under a century ago, the Jevlenese persuaded our predecessors that Earth was on the verge of doing just that, and urged a solution to contain Earth’s expansion permanently. The Thuriens commenced working on a contingency plan accordingly. Because of the false picture that we were given by the Jevlenese, we have continued with the preparations to implement that plan. If we had known the true situation on Earth, we would have abandoned the idea. Clearly the Jevlenese were misleading us in order to harness our technology to contain their rival permanently and eliminate it from competing with them across the Galaxy in times to come. That was what Broghuilio meant when he referred to the final solution."
The Terrans needed a few seconds to digest what Showm was saying. "I’m not sure I follow what you mean," Danchekker said at last. "Contained Earth’s expansion by what means? You don’t mean by force, surely."
Calazar shook his head slowly. "That would not be the Ganymean way. We said contain, not oppose. The choice of word was deliberate."
Hunt frowned as he tried to fathom what Calazar was driving at. Contain Earth? It was too late for that; mankind’s civilization had already spread a long way beyond Earth. Then it could only mean. . . . His eyes widened suddenly in disbelief. Surely not even Thurien minds could think on a scale as vast as that. "Not the solar system!" he gasped, staring at Calazar in awe. "You’re not telling us you were going to shut in the whole solar system."
Calazar nodded gravely. "We devised a scheme for using our gravitic science to create a shell of steepened gravitational gradient that nothing-not Earthmen, nor Earthmen’s aggression, nor even light itself, would escape from. Inside the shell conditions would be normal, and Earth would be free to pursue whatever way of life it chose. And beyond the shell, so would we." Calazar looked around and took in the appalled stares coming back at him. "That was to have been our final solution," he told them.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
And so for the first time in the long history of their race the Ganymeans found themselves at war, or at least in a situation so akin to war that the differences were academic. Their response to the Jevlenese was swift and devastating. Calazar ordered VISAR to withdraw all its services from the Jevlenese who were physically present on Thurien and the other Ganymean-controlled worlds. A whole population who throughout their lives had taken for granted the ability to communicate or travel instantly anywhere at any time, to have information of every description available on request, and who had relied completely on machines for every facet of their existence, found themselves suddenly cut off from the only form of society that they knew how to function in. They were isolated, powerless, and panic-stricken. Within hours they had been reduced to helplessness and were speedily rounded up and detained, as much for their own safety and sanity as to keep them out of any unlikely mischief, until the Ganymeans decided what to do with them. The whole Jevlenese contingent scattered across all the Ganymean worlds had thus been eliminated in a single lightning blow that left no survivors.
That left the enemy headquarters planet of Jevlen together with its system of allied worlds, which were serviced by JEVEX and not by VISAR. This, it turned out, was going to be a far harder nut to crack since it was unassailable by simply sending in ships as Hunt had thought of doing earlier.
The problem was that Jevlen was light-years away from Gistar, and the only way of getting ships there was through black-hole toroids projected by VISAR. But when VISAR attempted to project a few test beams into JEVEX’s operating zone, it found that JEVEX was able to disrupt the beams easily; evidently the Jevlenese had been planning to break from Thurien for some time. Neither was it feasible for VISAR to transfer ships through toroids projected to just beyond the fringe of JEVEX’s effective jamming radius to make their own way to Jevlen from there. The problem in this case was that all the Thurien vessels relied on power, as well as navigational and control signals, beamed through the Thurien h-grid from centralized generating and supervisory centers, and JEVEX could disrupt those beams just as easily. In other words, nothing could get into the Jevlenese system as long as JEVEX was operating, and the only way to stop it from operating was to send something in. It was a deadlock.
More serious was the possibility that the Jevlenese might have been amassing weapons secretly for a long time, and, in anticipation of exactly the kind of situation that now existed, building vessels to transport them that operated with self-contained propulsion and control capability. If so, they would be in a position to move their forces with impunity into VISAR-controlled regions and proceed unopposed with whatever threats or actions they had been planning. Time was crucial. The events at Thurios had clearly forced the Jevlenese to make their break sooner than they had intended, and the more swiftly the Thuriens reacted, the better the chances would be of catching the Jevlenese at a disadvantage with their preparations incomplete. But what kind of reaction was possible from a race that had no experience of resisting an armed opponent, possessed no weaponry to react with even if they had, and couldn’t get near their opponent anyway? Nobody had any solution to offer until a day after the confrontation in Thurios, when Garuth, Shilohin, and Eesyan requested a private audience with Calazar.
"No disrespect, but your experts are missing the obvious," Garuth said. "They’ve taken advanced Thurien technology for granted for so long that they can’t think in any other terms."
Calazar raised his hands protectively. "Calm down, stop waving your arms about, and tell me what you’re trying to say," he suggested.
"The way to get in at Jevlen is in orbit over Thurien right now," Shilohin said. "The Shapieron. It might be obsolete by your standards, but it’s got its own on-board power, and ZORAC flies it perfectly well without any need for anybody’s h-grid."
For a few seconds Calazar stared mutely back at them in astonishinent. What they had said was true-none of the scientists who had been debating the problem without a break since JEVEX had severed its connections had even considered the Shapieron. It seemed so obvious that Calazar was convinced there had to be a flaw. He looked questioningly at Eesyan.
"I can’t see why not," Eesyan said. "As Shilohin says, there’s no way JEVEX could stop it."
There was something deeper behind this proposal, Calazar sensed as he searched Garuth’s face. What was equally obvious, and had not been said, was that even if JEVEX could not prevent the Shapieron from physically entering its operating zone, it might well have plenty of other means at its disposal for stopping the ship once it got in there. Garuth had been itching to confront the Jevlenese yesterday, and had been frustrated at the last moment. Was he now ready to risk himself, his crew, and his ship in recklessly settling something that he saw as a personal vendetta against Broghuilio? Calazar could not permit that. "The Shapieron would still be detected," he pointed out. "The Jevlenese will have sensors and scanners all over their star
system. You could be walking into anything. A ship on its own, isolated from any communications with Thurien, with no defensive equipment of any kind? . . ." He let the sentence hang and allowed his expression to say the rest.
"We think we have an answer to that," Shilohin said. "We could fit the ship’s probes with low-power h-link communicators that wouldn’t register on JEVEX’s detectors and deploy them as a covering screen twenty miles or so out from the Shapieron. That would give them, effectively, faster-than-light communications back to the ship’s computers. ZORAC would be able to generate cancellation functions that the probes would relay outward as out-of-phase signals added to the optical and radar wavelengths reflected from the ship so that the net readings registered at a distance in any direction would be zero. In other words it would be electromagnetically invisible."
"It would still show up on h-scan," Calazar objected. "JEVEX could detect its main-drive stress field."
"We don’t have to use main drive at all," Shilohin countered. "VISAR could accelerate the ship in h-space and eject it from the exit port with sufficient momentum to reach Jevlen passively in a day. When it got near, it could retard and maneuver on its auxiliaries, which radiate below detection threshold."
"But you’d still have to project an exit port outside the star system," Calazar said. "You couldn’t hide that scale of disturbance from JEVEX. It would know that something was going on."
"So we send another ship or two as decoys . . . unmanned ships," Shilohin replied. "Let JEVEX jam those and think that’s all there is to it. In fact that would be a good way of diverting its attention from the Shapieron. "
Calazar still didn’t like the proposal. He turned away, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced slowly across the room to stare at the wall while he thought it over. He was not a technical expert, but from what he knew, the scheme was workable theoretically. Thurien ships carried on-board compensators that interacted with a projected toroid, compacting it and minimizing the gravitational disturbance created around it. That was why Thurien ships could travel out of a planetary system and transfer into h-space after only a day of conventional cruising. The Shapieron had not been built with such compensators, of course, which was why months had been necessary for it to clear the solar system. But even as the thought struck him, Calazar realized there was a simple answer to that too: the Shapieron could be equipped with a Thurien compensator system in a matter of days. Anyway, if there were serious technical difficulties, Eesyan would already have found them.
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