The Security Minister cleared his throat. "We should 483 arrest the family of Colonel Leonov and anyone else who is part of this lunar rebellion."
"What good would that do?" the General Secretary grumbled.
"They might become useful hostages." "Idiot! Think of the hostages they have at their mercy!"
"Hostages?"
Rapping the table with his knuckles on each word, the General Secretary counted, "Moscow, Leningrad, Smolensk, Volgagrad, Kiev ..."
"Then we're agreed," the Defense Secretary said, "that recapturing the space stations is our first order of business."
"Yes," whispered the burly man.
General Hofstader nodded.
"I'm not so sure," the President said. "How can we get troops up there if they're going to shoot down all our rockets?"
"We'll have to work out a plan," said Hofstader.
"There are a lot of things we'll have to work out," the
Defense Secretary agreed.
"Yes," came the angry whisper. "A lot of things."
It was nearing midnight when General Murdock read the TWX for the last time. He was still in his office, at his desk. The lights of Vandenberg Aerospace Force Base were still blacked out; the red alert had not yet been lifted.
His wife had phoned three times, and each time he had told her he would be home in an hour. He had not mentioned the TWX to her. He stared at the flimsy sheet of paper. "Right out in the open," he muttered. "Not even a private communication. Everybody on the base must know about it. They knew about it before I did."
He was past crying. He had blubbered for an hour when the TWX had first arrived. His secretary had tried coffee, bourbon, womanly comforting that went from a motherly caress to an offer to bed down for the night. The base chaplain had come in to talk to him briefly. "It's an investigation—that's all that a court-martial means. They can't find you guilty of treason or dereliction of duty." Shaking, Murdock had ordered him out of his office. 484
A psychologist, a golf-playing friend of the General, had dropped by long after the dinner hour. "But why do you think they're going to blame you. Bob? You had nothing to do with it."
Murdock moaned. "I'm the one they can reach. I'm the commanding officer of the men who rebelled. It's my respon- sibility. Haven't you studied military history? Don't you know what happened to General Short, after Pearl Harbor? What do you think they're going to do to me?" He had screamed the last words.
Prayer did not help. Neither did tranquilizers. Murdock knew what they were going to do to him. Knew it quite clearly. "You're killing me, Kinsman," he murmured as he sat at his desk, head in his hands, his uniform dark with sweat despite the gusting air-conditioning that rimed the papers on his desk. But not the TWX. It was magnetically pinned to the deskpad. Nothing could blow it away.
Court-martial. Inquiry. Trial.
