Alec hesitated, then lied. “I’m not sure yet. I have to talk to mother and the Council.”

“She’s still on the Council?”

“She chairs it.”

Douglas grunted. “I might have guessed. Matriarchal societies need a queen bee.”

Alec clenched his fists but said nothing.

“Listen to me,” Douglas commanded. “In the next few days you and your men are going to come down with dysentery. It’s not fatal...”

“We have pills for that.”

“Bull-hickey! The pills won’t do a damned thing for you, take my word for it. Once you start eating the local flora and fauna your gut bugs change and you get dysentery. It’s inevitable. And although it won’t kill you, it’ll make you wish you were dead. You’ll be in no condition to defend yourselves. Unless you’re safely in the shuttles, you’ll be helpless here. And I can’t afford to have my people sitting around here for days on end, protecting you.”

“So take off,” Alec snapped. “We don’t need your protection.”

“You could come with us.”

“And help you to build your empire?”

“Help save your mother and everyone else in the settlement!”

“I’ll save them—by getting those fissionables.”

Douglas shook his head, a ponderous negative motion. “No. That’s something you can’t do. They’re too far from here, and too well protected. You’d be dead long before you got to within a hundred kilometers.”

“I came here for the fissionables.”

“You’ll get yourself killed.”

“You’re going to kill me?”

“I won’t have to lift a finger!” Douglas was starting to sound exasperated. “There are a thousand ways of getting yourself killed here: raider bands, injuries... hell, you could even starve to death, if you know as little about survival as I think you do.”

“I’m going to get those fissionables, one way or the other.”

Douglas suddenly turned sarcastic. “Oh are you? Well, you’re going to find that that’s just a leetle tough to accomplish. In the first place, when you talk to your mother, she’s going to order you back home. I know her, and she won’t have her precious son running around here in the open where he might stub his toe.”

“You might have known her,” Alec flashed, white-hot, “but you don’t know me.”

“That’s true. And it’s a shame I never will. Because you’re either returning to the settlement or you’re going to be killed inside of a week.”

“We’ll see.”

“Indeed we will. It’s a shame your education is going to prove fatal. You might have eventually turned out to be somebody worth knowing. You’re stubborn enough to be my son, I’ll give you that much.”

With that, Douglas reached for the jeep’s dashboard and twisted the ignition key. The motor purred to life. An electric motor! Alec realized, taken aback with surprise. Without another word Douglas put the jeep in reverse, backed smoothly out of the parking lot, and disappeared silently into the night.

Alec stood there for some moments, fingering the pistol at his side, before he realized that he might have killed Douglas then and there.

Chapter 18

Alec expected an argument from his mother the next morning, but he got none.

He sat buttoned into the armored cab of his truck, alone and isolated from the others. He reported everything that had happened so far, ending with his decision to head north and find the fissionables. His mother’s voice sounded strangely faraway, much colder and more distant than the quarter-million miles between them.

“You must do what needs to be done,” she said, metalically, icily, amid the cracklings and hisses of Sun-static.

“When I locate the fissionables you can send reinforcements to me.”

He could sense other pressures, other emotions working in her mind. “Very well, Alec. The Council will accept your plan. I’ll see to that.”

“And Kobol?”

The hesitation in her voice was more than the lag of lightspeed. “There are ways of handling Kobol. He won’t stop you.”

“You’ll need to bring out the other shuttles and make supply drops for us. We’re going to need medicine and ammunition, fuel for the truck generators...”

She said, “That will take time. Several days, at least. Probably longer.”

“All right. I’ll keep in touch through the satellite. It might be a good idea to activate one of the automatic relay satellites in synchronous orbit, if you can. Then we can keep a communications line open all the time.”

Her voice was fading, the satellite was passing out of range. “I’ll try, Alec. I’ll try.”

“Take care, Mother. Be careful.”

“And you, Alec. Do what needs to be done. Find him and do what needs...” her voice dimmed to an inaudible hiss.

Alec sat alone in the truck’s cab for several minutes, feeling flushed and weak. Got to get a grip on myself, he thought. I’m responsible for fifteen lives. He reached for the door handle and a sudden stab of pain seared through his middle. His head swam.

Dizzily, he stumbled out of the truck. It was cooler in the morning air. He took several deep racking breaths and forced the pain down.

“You,” he called to the nearest man, who was poking into the truck’s fuel cell, behind the cab and under the laser mounting. He looked up. Alec recognized him but couldn’t recall his name. “Find the medical tapes and read out the information on dysentery. Remind Gianelli to get all the available data on the subject when the satellite’s in range again.”

The man looked blankly at him. “The satellite won’t be in range again for twelve hours, will it?”

Alec nodded, bringing up the dizziness again. “Right. Do it.”

“Yeah, okay. Dysentery?” He started to look scared, rather than puzzled.

Slowly, fighting against the nausea that was gripping him, Alec made his way along the line of trucks, looking for Ron Jameson. He found him calmly sitting on the ground with his back against a truck’s wheel, cleaning his automatic rifle. The weapon was spread on a plastic sheet in front of him, broken down into its many glittering metallic parts. Jameson was deftly oiling the firing mechanism.

Ferret stood about ten meters away, watching Jameson with gleaming eyes.