“Normal daytime temperatures at Hades’ s location will be about 20 degrees below zero on the Celsius scale. Daytime temperatures on the equator will reach 140 degrees without any trouble at all. Without water, with temperatures that high, the last of the plant life will die. Without that plant life to put oxygen back into the air, the atmosphere will lose all its breathable oxygen as various chemical reactions cause the oxygen to bind to the rocks and soils of the surface. Other chemical reactions will bind up whatever nitrogen doesn’t freeze out onto the polar regions. The atmospheric pressure will drop drastically. Without the thermal insulation of a thick atmosphere, the planet’s ability to retain heat at the equator will decline. Equatorial temperatures will drop, until the entire planet is a frigid, airless wasteland, far more hostile to life than it wasbefore humans reached it.That is the current prognosis for the planet Inferno.”

Alvar Kresh stared in horror at the image of a frozen, wizened, dead world that hung in front of him. The greens and blues were all gone. The planet was a dun-colored desert, both its poles buried under huge, gleaming-white ice caps. He discovered that his fingers were clenched into the arms of his chair and that his heart was racing. He forced his fingers to relax, inhaled deeply in an effort to calm himself. “ All right,” he said, though it was clear things were anything but. “ All right. I knew there were problems, even if I did not know they were this bad. But what does all this have to do with me?” he asked, his voice quiet.

The Governor brought the lights back out and stepped out from behind his console. “That is perfectly simple, Sheriff Kresh. Politics. It comes down to a question of politics and the qualities of human nature. I could make a frontal attack, try and get the public behind me, get all Infernals to come together and save the planet. To do that, I would have to put on the show you have just seen, for the benefit of the entire planet. Broadcast it by every means available. Some people would accept the facts. But not all of them. Probably not even most of them.”

“What would the rest of them do?” Kresh asked.

“No. No. You think about that for a minute. Think about it, and you tellme what they would do.”

Alvar Kresh looked up again, at the dry, wizened corpse of a world that hung in space before him. What would they do? How would they react? The musty old traditionalists who yearned for the glories of the past; the Ironheads; the less radical people-such as himself-who saw a Settler scheme under every rock. The ones who were simply comfortable with the world and their lives as they were, firmly opposed to any change. What would they do?

“Deny it,” he said at last. “There would be riots, and calls for your impeachment, and any number of people with axes to grind trotting out studies to prove that you were dead wrong and that everything was fine. People would claim you were a dupe of the Settlers-more people than think that now. One way or another, I doubt you’d serve out your term of office.”

“You ‘re too optimistic. I would say the odds would be poor on myliving through my term of office, for what that is worth. But in a larger sense, that doesn’t matter. All men die. Planets need not,should not, die. Not after only a few centuries of life.” Grieg turned his back on Alvar and walked to the far end of his office. “It may sound grandiose, but if I am ejected from office and replaced by someone who insists that everything is fine-then I am convinced Inferno’s ecology will collapse. Maybe I am quite mad, or a raging egomaniac, but I do believe that to be true.”

“But how can you not inform the public about all this?”

“Oh, the people have to know, of course,” Grieg said, turning around to face Kresh again. “I didn’t mean to imply that I was going to try to keep this secret. That would be impossible over the long run. Any attempt to keep the lid on this permanently would be bound to fail. But so, too, would an effort to spring this information on the populace all at once. Today the average citizen simply believes that the terraforming system needs some fine tuning, some repairs and tidying up. They can’t quite see why we need to humble ourselves to the Settlers just for the sake of getting that job done.”

Grieg walked slowly down the length of the office, back toward Kresh. “It will take time to educate them, to prepare them for the knowledge of the danger. If the situation is handled properly, I can shape the debate, so that people want to decide how to rebuild the ecology and don’t waste time wondering if it even needs fixing. We need to get them to a thoughtful, determined frame of mind, where they can accept the challenge ahead. We can get to that point, I’m sure of it.

“But we must choose our path carefully. For the present, the situation is volatile, explosive. People are in the mood for argument, not reason. And yet we must start on the repair program now if there is to be any hope of success and survival. And we must use the strongest, most effective, fastest-moving tools available to us.”

Grieg came closer to Kresh, still talking, his eyes animated and intent. “In other words,” Grieg said, “the only hope for avoiding this disaster lies with the Settlers. Without their help this planet will be dead, for all intents and purposes, within a standard century. I find therefore that I am forced to accept their help, long before I have time to shape public opinion so that people will accept Settler help. I might add that the Settlers offered their help with certain conditions, which I was obliged to accept. One of those conditions will become apparent tonight.

“But my political alliance with the Settlers is shaky at best. If this robot assault case is not closed quickly and neatly, there can be no doubt that there will be a political explosion on this world, though I am not exactly certain what form it will take. If it gets out that a robot is suspected of a crime-or if Settlers are suspected of sabotaging robots-it will be hard, if not impossible, to prevent my enemies from expelling the Settlers. And if that move succeeds, the Settlers will wash their hands of us. Without their help, Inferno will die. And in the wake of the most recent Ironhead riots, I feel certain they are looking for an excuse to leave. We cannot afford to give them one.”

Grieg paced back and forth again, stepping through the edge of the simglobe hologram, his shoulder brushing through the ghostly-real image of a dead world to come. He crossed to Kresh and put his hands on the arms of Alvar’s chair. He leaned his face down close to Alvar’s, so close the Governor’s breath was warm against the Sheriff’s cheek. “Solve this case, Kresh. Solve it quickly and neatly and well. Solve it without complication or scandal.”

He spoke the last words in a whisper, the light of fear bright in his eyes. “If you do not,” he said quietly, “you will doom this planet.”