"Oh, no?" the President asked, his mouth tightening. "What else can we do? This, eh, colonel—what's his name?"
"Kinsman," General Hofstader spat.
"Yes. Kinsman. He's got us stopped, doesn't he? We can't lift a missile off the ground. We can't attack, and we can't be attacked. So there's nothing to do except what we used to do in blizzards when 1 was a kid: sit back and enjoy it."
"What makes you certain that we can't be attacked," came the burly man's tortured whisper.
The President blinked in puzzlement and the reflex response of fear. "Why? Do you think . . . ?"
It was eight o'clock in the evening in Moscow, but the same questions were being asked.
"Are we so certain," the Nameless One was asking in his stiletto-thin voice, "that this is not a clever American trick? What guarantee do we have that these lunar rebels will stop an American attack on us?"
The General Secretary shifted his bulk uneasily in his 482 chair. The long table was almost empty. Only Marshal Prokoff, the Minister of State Security, and the Nameless One were present.
"Didn't they shoot down half a dozen American mis- siles?" the General Secretary demanded.
"What are a half-dozen missiles?" the Nameless One countered. "A ruse, a decoy, aimed at lulling us into relaxing our guard. Tomorrow, or next week or next month they could strike while our defenses are in a state of sleepy lassitude."
"That's right," General Hofstader was saying. "This could all be a goddamned trick to catch us with our pants down."
"And keep us from instant readiness to launch a counter- strike," the Defense Secretary added.
"Or a preemptive strike," Hofstader said. The burly man whispered harshly. "More than that. While our attention is focused on the drama in space, we still face a very real crisis here on Earth. The Antarctic coal fields, the battles between our fishing fleets last summer ..."
". . . and they sank one of our submarines," Marshal Prokoff insisted, waggling one stubby finger in the air. "Do not let this trickery with the satellites blind us to the realities of Earth!"
Wearily, the General Secretary objected, "But this new situation has greatly altered the correlation of forces. What do you recommend as a new course of action? Clearly we cannot launch a missile strike against the West—for which ill fortune, I think, we should perhaps be grateful."
"Perhaps," the Nameless One said. Then with a thin smile he added, "But it will be necessary to send troops to recapture the orbital stations."
"Can it be done?"
"We will find a way."
"Remember, they have the orbital bombs with them at the space stations," Marshal Prokoff said. "We cannot allow them to hold these weapons over our heads."
The General Secretary glared at him. "The bombs that you insisted we place in orbit."
