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The President cleared his throat. "You all know why I've brought you here. So we don't have to play games."
"You don't want to congratulate us?" asked Clyde Booth sarcastically.
"Tributes may or may not be offered," said the President coldly. "That will depend."
"Depend on what?" Gunnar Eriksen demanded rudely.
"I believe what the President is fishing for," said Hudson, "is our blessing for allowing the Russians to claim a share of the moon."
"That and a confession of mass murder."
The tables were turned. They just sat there, eyes with the look of fish in a freezer, staring at the President.
Senator Porter, a fast thinker, launched his attack first. "Execution gangland style or Arsenic and Old Lace poison in the tea? If I may ask, Mr. President, what in hell are you talking about?"
"A small matter of nine dead Soviet cosmonauts."
"Those lost during the early Soyuz missions?" asked Dan Fawcett.
"No," answered the President. "The nine Russians who were killed on the Selenos lunar probes."
Hudson gripped the edge of the table and stared as if he had been electrocuted. "The Selenos spacecraft were unmanned."
"The Russians wanted the world to think so, but in reality they each carried three men. We have one of the crews on ice in the Walter Reed hospital morgue, if you care to examine the remains."
No one would have thought it to look at them. They considered themselves moral-minded citizens doing a job for their country. The last thing any of them expected to see in a mirror was the reflecti
on of a cold-blooded killer. To say that the President had his audience in the palm of his hand would be an understatement.
Hagen sat fascinated. This was all news to him.
"If you'll bear with me," the President continued, "I'll indulge in mixing facts with speculation. To begin with, you and your moon colonists have accomplished an incredible achievement. I compliment you on your perseverance and genius, as will the world in the coming weeks. However, you have unwittingly made a terrible error that could easily stain your accomplishment.
"In your zeal to wave the Stars and Stripes you have ignored the international space law treaty governing activities on the moon, which was ratified by the United States, the Soviet Union, and three other countries in 1984. Then you took it upon yourselves to claim the moon as a sovereign possession and, figuratively speaking, posted `Trespassers Will Be Shot' signs. Only you backed it up by somehow destroying three Soviet lunar probes. One of them, Selenos 4, managed to return to earth, where it orbited for eighteen months before control was reestablished. Soviet space engineers attempted to bring it down in the steppes of Kazakhstan, but the craft was damaged and it fell near Cuba instead.
"Under the guise of a treasure hunt, you sent Raymond LeBaron to find it before the Russians. Telltale marks of damage inflicted by your colonists had to be obliterated. But the Cubans beat you both to the downed craft and retrieved it. You weren't aware of that until now, and the Russians still don't know.
Unless. . ."
The President hung on the word. "Unless Raymond LeBaron has spilled his knowledge of the Jersey Colony under torture. I have it on good authority he was captured by the Cubans and turned over to Soviet military intelligence, the GRU."
"Raymond won't talk," Hudson said wrathfully.
"He may not have to," the President replied. "A few hours ago intelligence analysts, whom I asked to reexamine Soviet space signals received during Selenos 4's reentry orbits, have discovered that its data on the lunar surface were transmitted to a ground tracking station on the island of Socotra, near Yemen.
Do you comprehend the consequences, gentlemen?"
"We comprehend what you're driving at." It was General Fisher who spoke, his voice reflective. "The Soviets may have visual proof of the Jersey Colony."
"Yes, and they've probably put two and two together and figured your people up there had something to do with the Selenos disasters. You can be sure they will retaliate. No calls on the hot line, no messages slipped through diplomatic channels, no announcements in Toss or Pravda. The battle for the moon will be kept secret by both sides. When you total the score, gentlemen, the result is you have launched a war that may prove impossible to stop."
The men seated around the table were shocked and confused, dazed and angry. But they were angry only because of a miscalculation of an event that was beyond their knowledge. The awful truth took several moments to register.
"You speak of Soviet retaliation, Mr. President," said Fawcett. "Do you have any insight on the possibility?"
"Put yourself in Soviet shoes. They were on to you a good week before their Selenos 8 lunar station was launched. If I were President Antonov, I'd have ordered the mission converted from scientific exploration to a military operation. There is little doubt in my mind that when Selenos 8 touches down on the moon twenty hours from now, a special team of Soviet commandos will encircle and attack the Jersey Colony. Now you tell me, can the base defend itself?"
General Fisher looked at Hudson, then turned to the President and shrugged his shoulders. "I can't say. We've never made contingency plans for an armed assault on the colony. As I recall, their only weapons are two handguns and a missile launcher."
