I lifted my arms in bafflement, wondering what I was supposed to be witnessing. I was almost by accident that I fixed my gaze west and saw Phobos, one hour into its ascent, four hours from setting in the east. I glanced past it, then felt my neck stiffen and my eyes begin to water. Scary dog.

Charles said he was going to see a man about a scary dog. I did not know what Charles was going to do. But a hopeless wish, a wildest guess within me, pushed forward, fantasy turning to conviction. It fit. The Mercury could take them there, the equipment and the thinkers, and Charles was just the quiet sort of megalomaniac to think of such a thing and secretly offer it to Ti Sandra.

I started to speak but realized nobody would hear me. I pointed to the moon. I pulled Lieh toward me, touching helmets, and practically screamed the phrase from Shakespeare. “ ‘Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!’ Fear! Fear and panic, the dogs of war! Look at Phobos! My God, Lieh! He’s going to do it! He’s going to do it!”

She pulled away, her almond eyes squinting in concern, as if I might be insane. I laughed and wept, convinced I knew, convinced that somehow this horrible burden was about to be lifted from my shoulders. Dandy touched his helmet to mine and said, solicitously, “Something wrong, Ma’am?”

I grabbed his shoulders and spun him to look west, to face that familiar moon we had seen so often since our births, that dread canine Fear that accompanies the God of War, so innocuous and innocent for such a dreadful name, small and nicked away by meteoroids and early settlement mining, circling Mars every seven hours forty minutes at six thousand kilometers, low and fast, accompanied by its fellow dog Panic.

Lieh, Dandy and I all faced west. The architect stayed in shadow, not caring to expose himself to whatever had made us mad.

Bright and full against the dark star-strewn sky, Phobos climbed behind a low wisp of ice cloud. It turned ghostly in the cloud, shimmered, and then emerged crystalline, as real and sharp as anything I had ever seen. I focused my will on it, as if helping Charles, as if a psychic link had risen between us all in this extremity and we could each of us know what the other was thinking and doing. My will went out and touched the moon and I was half insane with a terrified desire.

Phobos disappeared. There were no clouds between, no obscuring dust. The clarity of deep gray orbiting stone simply vanished.

My desire became epiphany. Dandy and Lieh scanned the sky, not understanding; they did not know what I knew.

Then Lieh turned to me and her eyes widened with fear. She and Dandy touched helmets with me simultaneously. “Have they blown it up?” Dandy asked.

“No,” I said, weeping. “No! They’ve shown Earth what we can do!”

They still did not comprehend. I didn’t care. In my relief and ecstasy — in my absolute terror for Charles — I loved them as if they had been my own children. I grabbed their arms and shouted, helmets pressed together firmly, “They’ve gone to Phobos and they’ve moved it. Never forget this! Never! Never forget!”

On the parapet of the future observation deck, I did a mad little pirouette, then fetched up against a pillar and stared out over the red and orange vastness of the basin. Phobos had left the skies of Mars, and I did not know when or if it would return.

But I knew, as surely as if Charles and Ti Sandra had told me themselves, where they had sent it. And I knew Charles was riding it… Across the Solar System, to Earth, a dreadful warning from her oppressed child.

Phobos now rose in the skies of the Mother of us all.

Don’t tread on me.

Dickinson sat where I had left him, Gretyl nearby. They seemed at peace, content to play their roles in this grand comeuppance. It would be almost an hour before a message could be sent from Earth. Until then, he was mine to toy with, and I felt more than wicked.

As ignorant as Dickinson , the legislators resumed their seats after standing at my entrance.

“Mr. Dickinson,” I said, “I refuse your ultimatum. I’m placing you under arrest. Under the laws of the Federal Republic of Mars…” I consulted my slate, leaned over the table, and pointed my finger at him, “you are accused of high crimes against the Republic, including treason, espionage, not registering as a foreign agent, and threatening the security of the Republic.” I turned to Gretyl. “You, too, honey,” I said.

Dickinson glanced at the four Cailetet aides. He turned back to rne, blinking. His equanimity impressed me no end. “That’s your answer?” he said.

“No. My answer to you and the groups you represent is that at the duly appointed time and under the proper circumstances, when order has been restored to this Republic and all threats have been rescinded, we will discuss issues of substance with properly identified Earth governments like civilized peoples. There will be a quorum of elected and appointed officials in this chamber, and duly recognized diplomats and negotiators from Earth. We’ll do it legally and openly.”

Gretyl lost some of her bearing; she flicked her eyes around the chamber like a deer in a cage. I remembered intense Gretyl ripping away her mask, willing to martyr herself on the Up. And I remembered, with sad clarity, how I had once thought Sean Dickinson the most noble male figure I had ever seen — brave, quiet and forthright. Had he offered, I would have bedded him instantly. And in bed he would have been quiet and reserved, a little chilly. I would have fallen into destructive love with him. He would have torn me up and discarded me.

I felt blessed for never having had that opportunity.

“Are you certain that’s what you want me to say?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. ‘Tell Crown Niger and Earth that your credentials are not acceptable.” I turned to Dandy. “After he’s done,” I said, “arrange for their arrest. All of them.”

Governor Henry Smith of Amazonis seemed close to fainting.

Dickinson stood, face suddenly ashen. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

For a moment, we stared at each other. Sean blinked, turned away slowly, and said, “I never trusted you. Not from the beginning.”

“I would have given my life for you,” I said. “But I was young and stupid.”

I’d like to pull back now and take a moment to rest and rethink my telling. I remember the emotions of that moment so vividly that I am back in that chamber. I wrote the above lines weeping like a young girl. It was the high moment of my life, perhaps because what came after was too sad and immense to be real.

From this time on, events fall in my memory like dead creatures across an old sea floor, flat and compressed, unreal.

I do not say I was not responsible. I was more involved, and therefore more responsible, than most; the blame has fallen squarely on me, and I accept it.

Phobos appeared in the skies over Earth in a broad elliptical orbit inclined at thirty degrees to the equator with a perigee of one thousand kilometers and apogee of seven thousand.

Phobos’s bright face, quickly waxing and waning, changed the entire equation as nothing else could. Mars could drop moons on Earth. In the strategic balance, we now tipped the scales.

Earth did not know that on Phobos rode the equipment and the individuals essential to the wielding of this power. What they did not know, weakened them.

And what Earth would soon know or guess could ultimately weaken us.

The evolvons withdrew within six hours, on command from Earth’s satellites around Mars. Those satellites then self-destructed, leaving tiny streaks of red against the dark sky. We received assurances that locusts had not been planted; confusion and weakness, for the moment, forced us to accept that. Mars began to come alive again; its dataflow blood coursed.