Spivey’s image paused. He cleared his throat and leaned forward a little.

“I won’t pretend we haven’t been surprised by events these last few weeks, doctor. I thought we could finish our experiments long before word leaked out. But things didn’t go according to plan.

“It wasn’t just your little demonstration, yesterday, which nearly everyone in the Western Hemisphere got to witness by naked eye. Even neglecting that, there were just too many bright people out there with their own instruments and souped-up ferret programs.” He shrugged. “I guess we should have known better.

“What really disturbs me, though, is what I hear people saying about our intentions. Despite all the innuendo, you must believe I’m no screaming jingoist. I mean, honestly, could I have persuaded so many decent men and women — not just Yanks and Canadians, bat Kiwis and Indonesians and others — to take part if our sole purpose was to invent some sort of super doomsday weapon? The idea’s absurd.

“I now see I should have confided in you. My mistake, taking you for a narrowly focused intellectual. Instead, I found myself outfought by a warrior, in the larger sense of the word.” He smiled ruefully. “So much for the accuracy of our dossiers.”

Alex sensed the others’ silent regard. Eyes flicked in his direction. He felt unnerved by all this talk centering on him personally.

“So, you might ask, what was our motive?” Spivey sighed. “What could any honest person’s goal be, these days? What else could ever matter as much as saving the world?

“Surely you’ve seen those economic-ecological projections everyone plays with on the Net? Well, Washington’s had a really excellent trends-analysis program for two decades now, but the results were just too appalling to release. We even managed to discredit the inevitable leaks, to prevent widespread discouragement and nihilism.

“Put simply, calculations show our present stable situation lasting maybe another generation, tops. Then we all go straight to hell. Oblivion. The only way out seemed to demand drastic sacrifice… draconian population control measures combined with major and immediate cuts in standard of living. And psych profiles showed the voters utterly rejecting such measures, especially if the outcome would at best only help their great-grandkids.

“Then you came along, Lustig, to show that our projection missed some critical information… like the little item that our world is under attack by aliens!

“More important, you showed how new, completely unexpected levers might be applied to the physical world. New ways of exerting energy. New dangers to frighten us and new possibilities to dazzle. In another age, these powers would have been seized by bold men and used for better or worse, like TwenCen’s flirtation with the atom.

“But we’re growing up… that’s the popular phrase, isn’t it? We know new technologies must be watched carefully. I’m not totally against the science tribunals. Who could be?

“Tell me, though, Lustig, what do you think the new committee will do when they take authority over the new science of gazerdynamics?”

Obviously, the question was rhetorical. Alex already saw the colonel’s point.

“Except for one or two small research sites, they’ll slap on a complete ban, with fierce inspections to make sure nobody else emits even a single graviton! They’ll let you keep vigil on Beta, but outlaw any other gazer use that hasn’t already been tested to death. Oh sure, that’ll prevent chaos. I agree the technology has to be monitored. But can you see why we wanted to delay it for a while?”

Spivey pressed both hands on his desk. “We hoped to finish developing gazer-based launch systems, first! If they were already proven safe and effective, the tribunes couldn’t ban them entirely. We’d save something precious and wonderful… perhaps even a way out of the doomsday trap.”

Alex exhaled a sigh. Teresa should hear this. She despised Spivey. And yet he turned out to be as much a believer as she. Apparently the infection went all the way to the pinnacles of power.

“Our projections say resource depletion is going to kill human civilization deader than triceratops — this poor planet’s gifts have been so badly squandered. But everything changes if you include space! Melt down just one of the millions of small asteroids out there, and you get all the world’s steel needs for an entire decade, plus enough gold, silver, and platinum to finance rebuilding a dozen cities!

“It’s all out there, Lustig, but we’re stuck here at the bottom of Earth’s gravity well. It’s so expensive to haul out the tools needed to begin harnessing those assets…

“Then came your gazer thing… Good God, Lustig, have you any idea what you did yesterday? Throwing megatons of ice to the moon?” A vein pulsed in Spivey’s temple. “If you’d landed that berg just ten percent slower, there d have been water enough to feed and bathe and make productive a colony of hundreds! We could be mining lunar titanium and helium-3 inside a year! We could…”

Spivey paused for breath.

“A few years ago I talked several space powers into backing cavitronics research in orbit, to look for something like what you found by goddam accident! But we were thinking millions of times too small. Please forgive my obvious jealousy…”

Someone behind Alex muttered, “Jesus Christ!” He turned to see Teresa Tikhana standing behind him. Her face was pale, and Alex thought he knew why. So her husband hadn’t worked on weapons research after all. He had just been trying, in his own way, to help save the world.

There would be some poignant satisfaction for her in that, but also bitterness, and the memory that they had not parted in harmony. Alex reached back and took her hand, which trembled, then squeezed his tightly in return.

“… I guess what I’m asking is that you use your influence with the tribunal — and it will be substantial — to keep some effort going into launch systems. At least get them to let you throw more ice!”

Spivey leaned even closer to the camera.

“After all, it’s not enough just to neutralize some paranoid aliens’ damned berserker device. What’s the point, if it all goes into a toxic-dumpit anyway?

“ But this thing could be the key to saving everything, the ecology… ”

Alex was rapt, mesmerized by the man’s unexpected intensity, and he felt Teresa’s flushed emotion as well. So they both flinched in reflex surprise when somebody behind them let out a blood-chilling scream.

“Give that back!”

Everyone turned, and Alex blinked to see June Morgan waging an uneven struggle with… Pedro Manella! The blonde woman hauled at her briefcase, which the Aztlan reporter clutched in one meaty hand, fending her off with the other. When she kicked him, Pedro winced but gave no ground. Meanwhile, Colonel Spivey droned on.

“… creating the very wealth that makes for generosity, and incidentally giving us the stars…”

Alex stood up. “Manella! What are you doing!”

“He’s stealing my valise!” June yelled. “He wants my data so he can scoop tonight’s presidential speech!”

Alex sighed. That sounded like Manella, all right. “Pedro,” he began. “You’ve already got an inside story any reporter would die for—”

Manella interrupted. “Lustig, you better have a—” He stopped with a gulp as June swiveled full circle to elbow him sharply below the sternum, then stamped on his foot and snatched the briefcase during her follow-through. But then, instead of rejoining the others, she spun about and ran away!

“S-stop her!” Pedro gasped. Something in his alarmed voice turned Alex’s heart cold. June held the valise in front of her, sprinting toward the towering resonator. “A bomb?” Teresa blurted, while Alex thought, But they checked for bombs!

At another level he simply couldn’t believe this was happening. June?