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They glared at each other in perfect mutual loathing. “Time will tell which of us is correct,” Zeshpass said, and Straha made the affirmative gesture.
It was some time after midnight when the guard named Fred shook Sam Yeager awake. “Come on, pal,” he said when Yeager showed signs of returning to the real world. “You sleep like a rock. Shows you’ve got a clean conscience. I wish to God I did, believe me.”
Sam yawned and rubbed his eyes. Around the yawn, he asked, “What’s going on that won’t keep till morning?” He sounded mushy without his false teeth.
“Somebody wants to see you,” Fred answered. “Come on.”
“Yeah?” Yeager tensed, wishing he hadn’t made that sound quite so dubious. Who’d want to see him in the middle of the night? Were the guards waking him up so they could dispose of him more conveniently?
Fred might have read his mind. “Don’t do anything stupid, Yeager,” he said, and his.45 appeared as if by magic in his right hand. “If I wanted to ice you, I could blow your brains out without bothering to wake you up, right? No fuss, no muss, no bother. But I wasn’t blowing smoke up your ass. Somebody wants to see you, and he’s waiting in the living room.”
Yeager sniffed. The odor of fresh-perked coffee wafted in from the kitchen. As much as Fred’s words, that convinced him the guard was telling the truth. He put in his dentures and slid out of bed, asking, “Who is it? And can I get out of my pajamas first?”
“Don’t bother about the PJ’s,” Fred answered. “As for who, come on out front and see for yourself.”
“Okay.” Sam sighed. Whoever was out there would be in a uniform, or maybe a business suit. Facing him in blue-and-white striped cotton pajamas would only put Yeager at a disadvantage. Well, he was at a big enough disadvantage already. His feet slid into slippers. “Let’s go.”
“Attaboy.” Fred made the pistol vanish as smoothly as he’d brought it out.
Up the hall Yeager went. When he walked into the living room, he wasn’t surprised to see John and Charlie already there. With them stood another couple of men he hadn’t seen before. They wore nearly identical off-the-rack suits, and they both looked jumpy and alert despite the hour. Sam noticed that much about them, but nothing more, for his eyes went to the man in the rocking chair by the far wall. Despite pajamas, he wanted to come to attention. He didn’t, not quite. Instead, he nodded and spoke as casually as he could: “Hello, Mr. President.”
Earl Warren returned the nod. “Hello, Lieutenant Colonel Yeager,” he replied. “Officially, I’ll have you know, this conversation is not taking place. Officially, I’m somewhere else-you don’t need to know where-and sound asleep. I wish I were.” He glanced over to one of the strangers in a suit. “Elliott, why don’t you get Yeager here a cup of coffee? I expect he could use one. I know I’m glad to have mine.”
“Sure,” said the Secret Service man-or so Sam assumed him to be. “You take cream and sugar, Lieutenant Colonel?”
“Both, please. About a teaspoon of sugar,” Yeager answered, for all the world as if this were an utterly normal conversation. Elliott went off to the kitchen.
“Sit down, Lieutenant Colonel, if you please,” President Warren said, and Sam saw that all the guards had left the armchair across the room from the rocker for him. The only reason they were there was to make sure he didn’t strangle the president. He’d asked to see Warren not really expecting anyone would pay any attention to him, but now Warren was here.
Elliott brought him the coffee. Not a drop had slopped from cup into saucer; the Secret Service man had steady hands. “Thanks,” Sam told him, and got a curt nod in return. He sipped the coffee. It was hot and strong and good.
President Warren let him drink about a third of the cup, then said, “Shall we get down to brass tacks?”
“Okay by me.” Yeager pointed to Fred and Charlie and John. “But these fellows have said they don’t want to know why they’ve been keeping me here. Should they listen in?”
His guards and the Secret Service men put their heads together. Then, to his surprise, the fellows who’d ridden herd on him trooped out of the living room and out of the house; he heard the door close behind them. President Warren said, “I think Jim and Elliott should be able to keep me safe.” Yeager nodded; they were bound to be armed. Even if they weren’t, either one of them could have broken him in half. With a sigh, the president asked, “Well, Lieutenant Colonel, what’s on your mind?”
Sam took another sip of coffee before answering. He took a deep breath, too. Now that he had to bring them out, the words wanted to stick in his throat. He wished the coffee were fortified with something stronger than cream and sugar. But he said what he had to say: “Sir, why did you order the attack on the colonization fleet?”
Both Secret Service men started. Elliott muttered something under his breath. He and the one named Jim stared at the president. Earl Warren sighed again. “The classic answer is, it seemed like a good idea at the time. And it did seem like a good idea. It was the hardest blow humans have even struck against the Race, and the Lizards never really suspected the United States. No one did-except you, Lieutenant Colonel. Are you happy to realize that, by being right, you may have brought your country down in flames?”
That made Sam take another deep, anything but happy breath. “Mr. President, I decided a long time ago that whoever launched missiles at the colonization fleet was a murderer,” he answered. “I swear to God, I thought it was the Nazis or the Reds. I never imagined the trail would lead back to us.”
“But you kept looking, didn’t you?” President Warren said. “You couldn’t take a hint. You just kept poking your nose where it didn’t belong.”
“A hint, sir?” Yeager said in real puzzlement. “What kind of hint?”
Warren sighed again. “Wouldn’t you say that the unfortunate things that kept almost happening to you and your family-that would have happened if you’d been less on your guard-were a hint that you were digging in places you shouldn’t be? We even tried to pass that message to you, first through General LeMay and then through Straha’s driver.”
“General LeMay was only talking about the Lewis and Clark,” Sam said, “and I didn’t know just what Straha’s driver was talking about-not till I found out what had happened to the colonization fleet, anyway. And by then it was too late.”
“It may be too late for all of us,” the president said heavily. “What on earth possessed you to give Straha a printout of what you’d found?”
“When I did find it, Mr. President, all of a sudden I understood why I’d been having all the trouble I’d been having,” Yeager answered. “I thought of Straha as a life-insurance policy-if anything happened to me or to my kin, the word would still get out. I guess it has?”
“Oh, it has, all right.” Earl Warren glared at him. “That damned Lizard sneaked out of the USA and into Cairo, and by every sign those documents got there ahead of him. And Atvar has been threatening war against the United States ever since. That is a war you must know we would lose.”
“Yes, sir, I do know that,” Sam said. “I’ve known it all along. I thought you did, too. The Lizards have always said they’d do something dreadful if they ever found out who hit the colonization fleet. I figured Germany or Russia would deserve it. I have trouble thinking we don’t. I’m sorry, sir, but that’s how it looks to me.”
“Do you know what one of the Race’s principal demands has been?” the president asked with an angry toss of the head.
“No, sir. I have no idea,” Sam replied. “I haven’t seen much in the way of news lately. Is my family all right?” They could have held him and done God knows what to Barbara and Jonathan. The guards had said they hadn’t, but still… Doing that would screw up the experiment with Mickey and Donald, but they probably wouldn’t care. They’d figure keeping a secret was more important.
But now President Warren nodded. “Your wife and son are fine. You have my word on it.” Yeager had always thought his word good. Now he
knew it wasn’t, or wasn’t necessarily. Before he could do more than realize that, Warren went on, “The Lizards are insisting that you be released unharmed, and that no harm befall your kin. It is a condition we intend to meet.”
God bless Straha, Sam thought. He lived among Big Uglies so long, he got some notion of how important family members are to us. And thank heaven he managed to get that across to the Lizards in Cairo. Aloud, he made his voice harsh: “Is that the reason I’m still breathing? And my wife and son?”
“It is… one of the reasons,” Warren answered. Yeager gave the president reluctant credit for not flinching from the question. “It is also the only condition we find easy to meet. The Race is demanding that we either let them incinerate one of our cities with an explosive-metal bomb or make concessions to them that would permanently weaken us-not quite to the degree the Reich has been diminished, but something not far from that.”
Yeager winced. Sure enough, the Lizards hadn’t been kidding. “And if you tell them no on both those counts, it’s war?”
“That is about the size of it, Lieutenant Colonel Yeager,” the president said. “We have you to thank for it.”
But Yeager shook his head. “No, sir. You were the one who ordered the launch. The Race would have found out sooner or later, and they’d have been just as furious a hundred years from now as they are right this minute.”
“We would be in a stronger position to fight back a hundred years from now,” Warren said.
“Maybe,” Sam said, “but maybe not, too. Who knows what’ll be heading this way from Home now that the Lizards know we’re not pushovers?”
