XII.

XII.

The coup d'etat may appear in a thousand different guises. The prudent ruler suspects even his own shadow.de Etienne

The coup d'etat may appear in a thousand different guises. The prudent ruler suspects even his own shadow.

de Etienne

The Sky Room of the Opal Cross was so altered it was hard to believe it had been a festivities center only three days ago. The World Map and Space Map still held their dominating positions, but the one was dotted with colored pictorial symbols indicating the location of spaceports and space-yards, defense installations, armament fabrication and conversion centers, regular and emergency power stations, field headquarters, and like military information, while the Space Map, in which a system of perspective realistically conveyed three-dimensional depth, was similarly dotted in the Marsward sector to indicate the real or hypothetic location of spacecraft. This latter map emphasized with chilling clarity the fact that Earth had nothing at all in the way of an interplanetary battle fleet, only a scattering of unarmed or lightly armed exploratory craft that now, by stretching a point, could be counted as scouts. While fanning out from Mars in a great hemisphere, hypothetic but none the less impressive, loomed a vast armada.

The rest of the Sky Room was filled with terraced banks of televisor panels, transmission boards, plotting tables, and various calculating machines, all visible from the central control table around which they crowded. One whole sector was devoted to other military installations and specialized headquarters in the Opal Cross. Other sectors linked the control table with field headquarters, observation centers, spacecraft, and so on.

But now all the boards and tables, save the central one, were unoccupied. The calculating machines were untended and inoperative. And the massed rows of televisor panels were all blank gray—as pointless as a museum with empty cases.

A similar effect of bewildered deflation was apparent in most of the faces of the World Executive Committee around the control table. The exceptions included Chairman Shielding, who looked very angry, though it was a grave anger and well under control; Conjerly and Tempelmar, completely and utterly impassive; Clawly, also impassive, but with the suggestion that it would only take a hairtrigger touch to release swift speech or action; and Firemoor, who, sitting beside Clawly, was plainly ill at ease—pale, nervous, and sweating.

Shielding, on his feet, was explaining why the Sky Room had been cleared of its myriad operators and clerks. His voice was as cuttingly realistic as a spray of ice water.

"... and then," he continued, "when astronomic photographs incontrovertibly proved that there were no alien craft of any sort near Mars—certainly none of the size reported and nothing remotely resembling a fleet, not even any faintly suspicious asteroids or cometary bodies—I hesitated no longer. On my own responsibility I sent out orders countermanding any and all defense preparations. That was half an hour ago."

One of the gray panels high in the Opal Cross sector came to life. As if through a window, a young man with a square face and crisply cropped blond hair peered out. The emptiness of the Sky Room seemed to startle him. He looked around for a moment, then switched to high amplification and called down to Shielding,

"Physical Research Headquarters reporting. A slight variation in spatio-temporal constants has been noted in this immediate locality. The variation is of a highly technical nature, but the influence of unknown spy-beams or range-finding emanations is a possible, though unlikely, explanation."

Shielding called sharply, "Didn't you receive the order countermanding all activities?"

"Yes, but I thought—"

"Sorry," called Shielding, "but the order applies to Research Headquarters as much as any others."

"I see," said the young man and, with a vague nod, blanked out.

There was no particular reaction to this dialogue, except that the studied composure of Conjerly and Tempelmar became, if anything, more marked—almost complacent.

Shielding turned back. "We now come to the question of who engineered this criminally irresponsible hoax, which," he added somberly, "has already cost the lives of more than a hundred individuals, victims of defense-preparation accidents." Firemoor winced and went a shade paler. "Unquestionably a number of persons must have been in on it, mainly members of the Extraterrestrial Service. It couldn't have been done otherwise. But we are more interested in the identity of the main instigators. I am sorry to say that there can be no question as to the identity of at least two of these. The confession of three of the accomplices make it—"

"Co-ordination Center 3 reporting." Another of the Opal Cross panels had flashed on and its perplexed occupant, like the other, was using high amplification to call his message down to Shielding. "Local Power Station 4 has just cut me off, in the midst of a message describing an inexplicable drain on their power supply. Also, the presence of an unknown vehicle has been reported from the main rotunda."

"We are not receiving reports," Shielding shouted back. "Please consult your immediate superior for instructions."

"Right," the other replied sharply, immediately switching off.

"There you see, gentlemen," Shielding commented bitterly, "just how difficult it is to halt a hoax of this sort. In spite of all our efforts, there undoubtedly will be more tragic accidents before minds get back to normal." He paused, turned. "Clawly and Firemoor, what do you have to say for yourselves in justification of your actions, beyond a confession of wanton mischievousness, or—I must mention this possibility too—an attempt to create confusion for the furtherance of some treasonable plot? Remember it is not a matter of accomplices' confessions alone, who might conceivably perpetrate a hoax and then attempt to shift the blame onto blindly gullible and negligent superiors. There is also the testimony of two members of our own committee, who can for the moment remain anonymous—"

"I see no reason for that," drawled Tempelmar.

"Thank you." Shielding nodded to him. "Very well, then. The testimony of Conjerly and Tempelmar." And he turned again toward the accused.

Firemoor looked down at the table and twisted miserably. Clawly returned Shielding's gaze squarely. But before either of them could reply—

"Co-ordination Center 4! Reporting the presence of a group of armed individuals in black garments of an unfamiliar pattern proceeding—"

"Please do not bother us!" Shielding shouted irritably. "Consult your superior! Tell him to refer all communications to Co-ordination Center 1!"

This time the offending panel blanked out without reply.

Shielding turned to a master control board behind him and rapidly flipped off all the beams, insuring against future interruption.

Clawly stood up. His face had the frozenness of pent tension, an odd mixture of grim seriousness and mocking exasperation at men's blindness, suggestive of a gargoyle.

"It was a hoax," he said coolly, "and I alone planned it. But it was a hoax that was absolutely necessary to prepare the world for that other invasion, against which I tried to warn you three days ago. The invasion whose vanguard is already in our midst. Of course Conjerly and Tempelmar testified against me—for they are part of the vanguard!"

"You're psychotic," said Shielding flatly, lowering his head a little, like a bull. "Paranoid. The only wonder is how it escaped the psychiatrists. Watch him, some of you"—he indicated those nearest Clawly—"while I call the attendants."

"Stay where you are, all of you! And you, Shielding, don't flip that beam!" Clawly had danced back a step, and a metal tube gleamed in his hand. "Since you believe I planned the Martian hoax—and I did—perhaps you'll believe that I won't stop at a few more deaths, not accidental this time, in order to make you see the truth. Idiots! Can't you see what's happening under your very noses? Don't you see what those reports may have meant? Call Co-ordination Center 1, Shielding. Go on, I mean it, call them!"

But at that instant Firemoor spun round in his chair and dove at Clawly, pinioning his arms, hurling them both down, wrenching the metal tube from his hand, sending it spinning to one side. A moment later he had dragged Clawly to his feet, still holding him pinioned.

"I'm sorry," he gasped miserably. "But I had to do it for your own sake. We were wrong—wrong to the point of being crazy. And now we've got to admit it. Looking back, I can't see how I ever—"

But Clawly did not even look at him. He stared grimly at Shielding.

"Thank you, Firemoor," said Shielding, a certain relief apparent in his voice. "You still have a great deal to answer for. That can't be minimized—but this last action of yours will certainly count in your favor."

This information did not seem to make Firemoor particularly happy. The pinioned Clawly continued to ignore him and to stare at Shielding.

"Call Communications Center 1," he said, deliberately.

Shielding dismissed the interruption with a glance. He sat down.

"The attendants will remove him shortly. Well, gentlemen," he said, "it's time we considered how best to repair the general dislocations caused by this panic. Also there's the matter of our position with regard to the trial of the accomplices." There was a general pulling-in of chairs.

"Call Communications Center 1," Clawly repeated.

Shielding did not even look up.

But someone else said, "Yes. I think now you'd better call them."

Shielding had started automatically to comply, before he realized just who it was that was speaking—and the particular tone that was being used.

It was Conjerly and the tone was one of command.

Conjerly and Tempelmar had risen, and were standing there as solidly as two obelisks—and indeed there was something unpleasantly monumental in their intensified, self-satisfied composure. Before anyone realized it, the center of attention of the meeting had shifted from Clawly and Firemoor to these new figures—or rather to these old and familiar figures suddenly seen in a new and formidable guise.

Shielding blinked at them a moment, as if he didn't know who they were. Then, with a haste that was almost that of fear, he swung around and flipped a beam on the board behind him.

Halfway up the terraced banks of gray squares, a panel came to life.

A man in black uniform looked down from it.

"Communications Center 1 seized for the Servants," he announced crisply in a queerly accented though perfectly intelligible voice.

Shielding stood stock-still for a moment, then flipped another beam.

"The soldiers of the Servants are in control at this point," said the second black-uniformed individual, speaking with equal crispness.

With a stifled, incredulous gasp, Shielding ran his hand down the board, flipping on all the panels in the Opal Cross sector.

Most of them showed black-uniformed figures. Of the remainder, the majority were empty.

And then it became apparent that not all the black-uniformed figures were merely televised images. Some of them were standing between the panels, in the Sky Room itself, holding weapons trained.

By a psychological illusion, the figures of Conjerly and Tempelmar seemed to grow taller.

"Yes," Conjerly said, soberly, almost kindly, "your government—or, rather, that absence of all sane control which you call a government—is now in the capable hands of the Servants of the People. Clawly's assertions were all quite correct, though fortunately we were able to keep you from believing them—a necessary deception. There is an invasion going on—an invasion that is in the best interests of all worlds, and one from which yours will benefit greatly. It is being made across time, through a region that has become common to both our worlds. That region is our transtime bridgehead. And, as is plain to see, our bridgehead coincides with your headquarters."

Clawly was not listening. He was watching a figure that was striding down the paneled terraces, its smilingly curious eyes fixed upon him. And as he watched, Firemoor and Shielding and some others began to watch too, slack-faced, dully amazed at this secondary impossibility.

The approaching figure was clad in black military flying togs whose sleek cut and suavely gleaming texture marked them as those of an individual of rank. But so far as physique and appearance were concerned, down to the last detail of facial structure, including even a similarity of expression—a certain latent sardonic mockery—he was Clawly's duplicate.

There was something very distinctive about the way the two eyed each other. No one could have said just when it started, but by the time they were facing each other across the control table, it was very plain; the look of two men come to fight a duel.

Clawly's face hardened. His gaze seemed to concentrate. His duplicate started, as if at a slight unexpected blow. For an instant he grinned unpleasantly, then his face grew likewise grim.

Neither moved. There was only that intense staring, accompanied by a silent straining of muscles and a breathing that grew heavy. But none of those who watched doubted but that an intangible duel was being fought.

Conjerly, frowning, stepped forward. But just then there grew a look of sudden desperate terror in the contorted face of Clawly's black-clad duplicate. He staggered back a step, as if to avoid falling into a pit. An unintelligible cry was wrenched out of him, and he snatched at his holster.

But even as he raised the weapon, there flashed across the first Clawly's features a triumphant, oddlydepartingsmile.


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