"The surveillance is operated by an autonomous . . . shall we say, ‘organization’ within our system," Calazar replied. "We had reason to suspect the accuracy of some of the information being reported. It became necessary for us to verify it . . . . but discreetly, in case we were wrong."

"Suspect the accuracy!" Hunt repeated, spreading his hands in an imploring gesture around the table. "You’re making it sound like just a minor aberration here and there. Christ. . . they didn’t even tell you that the Shapieron had returned and was on Earth at all-your own ship with your own people in it! And the picture you got of Earth wasn’t just inaccurate; it was systematically distorted. So what the hell’s been going on?"

"That is an internal affair of Thurien that we will now be in a position to do something about," Calazar assured him. He seemed a little off balance, perhaps as a result of his having been unprepared for the Terrans knowing as much as Caldwell had revealed.

"It’s not just an internal affair," Heller insisted. "It concerns our whole planet. We want to know who’s been misrepresenting us, and why."

"We don’t know why," Calazar told her simply. "That’s what we’re trying to find out. The first step was to get our facts straight. My apologies again, but I think we have now achieved that."

Caldwell was scowling. "Maybe you ought to let us talk to this ‘organization’ direct," he rumbled. "We’ll find out why."

"That’s not possible," Calazar said.

"Why?" Heller asked him. "Surely we’ve got a legitimate interest in all this. You’ve carried out your discreet checking of facts now, and you’ve got your answers. If you in fact represent this planet, what’s to stop you acting accordingly?"

"Are you in a position to make such demands?" Showm challenged. "If our interpretation of the situation is correct, you do not constitute an officially representative group of the whole of Earth’s society, either. That function surely belongs rightfully to the United Nations, does it not?"

"We’ve been communicating with them for weeks," Calazar said, taking Showm’s point. "They have done nothing to dispel any wrong impressions of Earth that we may have, and they seem disinclined to meet us. But your transmissions were directed from another part of the solar system entirely, suggesting perhaps that you did not wish our replies to become general knowledge, and therefore that you are equally concerned with preserving secrecy."

"What is the reason for the UN’s curious attitude?" Showm asked, looking from one to another of the Terrans and allowing her eyes to rest finally on Heller.

Heller sighed wearily. "I don’t know," she admitted. "Perhaps they’re wary of the possible consequences of colliding with an advanced alien culture."

"And so it might be with some of our own race," Calazar said. It seemed unlikely since Earth was hardly advanced by Thurien standards, but strange things were possible, Hunt supposed.

"So maybe we should insist on talking to that organization directly," Showm suggested pointedly. There was no response to that.

There was still something Hunt didn’t understand when he sat back and tried to reconstruct in his mind the probable sequence of events as the Thuriens would have perceived them. For some time they had been building up a picture of a belligerent and militarized Earth from the accounts forwarded by the mysterious "organization," none of which had mentioned the Shapieron. Then a signal, coded in Ganymean, had suddenly come in direct to Calazar’s side of the operation, advising that the ship was on its way home. After that, the further transmissions from Farside would have accumulated to hint of an Earth significantly different from that which the surveillance reports had described. But why had it been so important for the Thuriens to establish which version was correct? The measures that they had employed to find out said very clearly that the issue had been taken much more seriously than could be explained by mere academic curiosity or the need to straighten out some internal management problems.

"Let’s start at the beginning with this relay device-or whatever you’d call it-that you’ve got outside the solar system," he suggested when he had that much clear in his head.

"It’s not ours," Eesyan said at once from his position next to Calazar, opposite Showm. "We don’t know what it is, either. You see, we didn’t put it there."

"But you must have," Hunt protested. "It uses your instant communications technology. It responded to Ganymean protocols."

"Nevertheless it’s a mystery," Eesyan replied. "Our guess is that it must be a piece of surveillance hardware, not operated by us but by the organization responsible for that activity, which malfunctioned in some way and routed the signal through to our equipment instead of to its intended destination."

"But you replied to it," Hunt pointed out.

"At the time we were under the impression it was from the Shapieron itself," Calazar answered. "Our immediate concern was to let its people know that their message had been received, that they had correctly identified Gistar, and that they were heading for the right place." Hunt nodded. He would have done the same thing.

Caldwell frowned in a way that said he still wasn’t clear about something. "Okay, but getting back to this relay-why didn’t you find out what it was? You can send stuff from Thurien to Earth in a day. Why couldn’t you send something to check it out?"

"If it was a piece of surveillance hardware that had gone faulty and given us a direct line, we didn’t want to draw attention to it," Ecsyan replied. "We were getting some interesting information through it."

"You didn’t want this-‘organization’ to know about it?" Heller queried, looking puzzled.

"Correct."

"But they already knew about it. The reply from Gistar was all over Earth’s newsgrid. They must have known about it if they run the surveillance."

"But they weren’t picking up your signals to the relay," Eesyan said. "We would have known if they were." Suddenly Hunt realized why Gistar hadn’t responded to the Farside transmissions that had continued for months after the Shapieron’s departure: the Thuriens didn’t want to reveal their direct line via Earth’s news network. That fitted in with their insistence on nothing being communicated via the net when at last they had elected to reopen the dialogue.

Heller paused for a moment and brought her hand up to her brow while she collected her thoughts. "But they couldn’t have left it at that," she said, looking up. "From what they picked up out of the newsgrid, they would have known that you knew about the Shapieron -something they hadn’t been telling you about. They couldn’t have just done nothing . . . . not without arousing suspicion. They’d have to tell you about it at that point, because they knew if they didn’t you’d be going to them and asking some awkward questions."

"Which is exactly what they did," Calazar confirmed.

"So didn’t you ask them why they hadn’t gotten around to it earlier?" Caldwell asked. "I mean-hell, the ship had been there for six months."

"Yes, we did," Calazar replied. "The reason they gave was that they were concerned for the Shapieron’s safety, and feared that attempts to interfere with the situation might only jeopardize it further. Rightly or wrongly, they had come to the decision that it would be better for us to know only after it was out of the Solar System."

Caldwell snorted, obviously not impressed by the mysterious "organization’s" excuse. "Didn’t you ask to see the records they had acquired through their surveillance?"

"We did," Calazar answered. "And they produced ones that had every appearance of justifying their fears for the Shapieron completely."

Now Hunt knew where the phony depictions that he had witnessed of the Shapieron’s arrival at Ganymede had come from: the "organization" had faked them just as they had been faking their reports of Earth all along. Those were the versions that Calazar’s people had been shown. If those scenes with their frighteningly authentic blending of reality and fantasy were typical of what had been going on, it was no wonder that the deception had gone unsuspected for years.