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such means to have achieved anything.
The point didn t need elaborating. Even though Caton had been brought from
Earth as a child, he was considered a Kronian and he thought like one. It
seemed patently obvious to him that if a society appointed leaders from among
those who had demonstrated their greatest proficiencies to be in the
application of brute force and deception, then that was how their affairs
would be run. The nuisance being caused was certainly out of proportion to the
numbers and not something that was needed at times like these, and some
Kronians were for shutting the movement down forcibly if that was the Terran
way. However, President Urzin and most of the Congress were adamant that
suppression was not the Kronian way, and relied on the Kronian nature to
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prevail. If it wasn t robust enough to meet the challenge without turning into
that which it sought to supersede, then it probably wasn t worth clinging to,
they maintained.
Colonel Xelu went on, As a precaution in case the need ever arises, the
Security Arm is being trained in the capability for taking an expanded role in
containing and countering the possible use of violence, sabotage, and suchlike
to advance political aims. I trust I don t have to elaborate? I
regret the necessity, but it seems that prudence leaves us no choice.
Everyone regrets it, but it s only common sense, Norburn s voice said on the
circuit. When you think you re threatened, you prepare a defense. Look what
happened right here. What kind of state would Kronia have been in by now
without the LORIN stations?
They had reached the bottom of a vertical section of wall. A doorway to one
side opened into a large room that the flashlight beams showed to have fallen
in at the far end beneath sloping floor sections pressed down from above under
a mass of tangled metal. The space was somberly empty, covered everywhere in
gray dust. D-2 Level, Area 3, Xelu commented. Dormitory and living
quarters. This was where you found one of the biggest groups of survivors.
Over twenty, Caton answered dryly. The memories were starting to come back
now. How the place had kept enough air for the time it took to tent the
entrance and get down here was something he would never understand. They
didn t go through into the room now. Evidently what had brought the SA party
here lay elsewhere. Xelu turned from the doorway and indicated a length of
corridor leading in the opposite direction, partially blocked by the wall on
one side having burst inward, and ending maybe ten yards farther on at a
blockage of collapsed partitioning.
You didn t penetrate through any farther in that direction? Xelu inquired.
Caton shook his head behind his helmet visor-although in the darkness it would
be invisible.
The plan showed there were only sealed storage compartments that way. The
access door through to them was closed, and we couldn t pick up any readings
of movement or identity transmissions. It seemed better to use the time we had
to check other places. He was beginning to wonder
uncomfortably if the SA party had uncovered more bodies that they thought he
should have found.
But in times like that, these decisions had to be made. Xelu would understand
that.
But Xelu said, Let s have a look, then, and picking his way carefully
through the wreckage ahead of them, he continued, One of the things we re
doing is increasing our weapons stocks at various strategic locations. But to
avoid attracting undue attention with sudden manufacturing requests, we re
trying to make as much use as possible of the stocks that were built up during
the
Emergency period. He meant a time around twelve years prior to Athena, when
there had been fear of the political tension that had existed between Kronia
and Earth at that time leading to armed conflict. Our records showed that
there was a considerable inventory here that hadn t been recovered. The
reports sent back after the impact wrote them off as inaccessible and probably
not worth the effort. But our needs have changed since then, and we were sent
out to assess what would be involved in retrieving them. And what we found is
this. . . .
Xelu stepped aside to let the beams of light show a dark opening leading on
through what had been an impassible barrier. He ran a finger of his gauntlet
over the end of a piece of metal ribbing.
The edge was rounded by melting, showing that it had been cut by heat, not
broken in the impact.
His flashlight beam picked out spatterings of melted metal on the floor below,
and beneath more severed members beyond. It wasn t like this when you last
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saw it, Mr. Caton? Xelu asked. Either at the time of the accident, or in any
of your visits subsequently.
No! Caton was bemused. There was no way through there. As I told you, all
that we had reason to believe existed there was a closed door leading into a
sealed storage area.
That was where the weapons were, Xelu said. The door has been cut open.
A gasp sounded from Norburn. And the weapons?
What s left are old or of inferior quality. Whoever took them knew what they
were doing. We made a circuit of the area before calling you. The ground in
the immediate vicinity was churned up by the activity going on here up to the
final evacuation. But there are traces of a ground track leading away toward
the east that cuts through the other markings, meaning it was made more
recently. It gets lost farther out among the general impact gardening. What it
looks like is that whoever pulled this off landed some distance away in the
opposite direction from Omsk, below the radar horizon, and came overland.
How long ago did this happen? Caton asked. The question was mechanical. He
was still grappling with the implications.
Impossible to say, Xelu answered. From the degree of erosion of the tracks,
given the current conditions, I d say six months at least. . . . It could have
been anytime in the last year. He paused for a moment, then went on, It
seems there are those among us who would try to impose their wills by methods
that are not the Kronian way. We hoped it would never come to this. But if we
are left with no choice but to defend against force with force, then that is
how it will be.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The impression that had registered most forcibly with Keene was the
frightening thoroughness with which practically all traces of a civilization
that had taken such pride in its global extent and achievements appeared to
have been wiped out. Without Kronia, by the time a new order rose again of its
own accord, just about all memory of what had gone before would have been
lost.
Europe was a wilderness of volcanic desolation and cooling lava sheets, with a
two-hundred-
mile-long canyon gouged across the center, carved during one of the titanic
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