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.“The new Comp six-oh-two?” Munoz asked.“No.This time it was the Willys twelve-forty that calculated the comet’s ETA.off by six hours.”“In the wrong direction, I presume?” Munoz said.“Naturally.”Munoz shook his head, stared glumly at the floor.“The comet is not behaving according to known laws of physics,” Hudson said, rubbing the fringe of black hair on one side of his head.“Just one hour ago, it made a ninety-four degree turn, veering off into space for a time.Then it made another sharp turn, back to a collision course with Earth.”“How odd!” Peebles said.“What are we to do?” He sat sideways in the chair to look at Hudson, an arm draped across the chair back.“Silence!” Munoz commanded, shooting a fiery glance at his adjutant.“I have to think!” Munoz moto-slippered to the couch, sat down with his hands grasping his thighs.“How could the comet change like that?” he asked, staring at the floor.Hudson shrugged.“I don’t know.This thing’s a complete mystery to all of.” He stopped as Munoz looked up and glared at him.Such words had been spoken before.“Get out new orders, Allen,” Munoz said.“Have the crew ship ready three days earlier.by Tuesday afternoon at fourteen hundred hours.” He turned to Hudson.Hudson spoke as Munoz was formulating a new thought.“I’ll call Saint Elba and have the mass drivers moved up too.”“Right,” Munoz said.“And tell ’em to double-check the E-Cell charging bays.We don’t want any last minute problems.”“I’ll reiterate that.”“Anything else?” Munoz asked.“We’ll have to set up new recharging stations along the route in deep space,” Hudson said.“The others are placed incorrectly for the new course and time.I’ll refigure it right away.”“Good,” Munoz said.“We still have the matter of the pilot.There’s no time left.”“Have any more garbage balls spoken to you?”“What do you mean by that?” Munoz snapped.“Maybe you were tired.The mind and eyes can play tricks.”“It was in flames, and came right at my face! I was there! And listen to the clincher: there is a Sidney Malloy!”“Yeah?”“He’s a nobody in the Presidential Bureau—Central Forms.”“You’re not actually thinking of using him?” Hudson asked.“I have a strong feeling—call it intuition, I don’t know.Something tells me.”“We need to go on more than intuition,” Hudson said.“Everything rides on this mission, Arturo.This calls for the best, only the very best.”“I know.”“Did it occur to you that your trash can magic trick might have been performed by the Black Box?”“No,” Munoz said.“I’m sure they had nothing to do with it.”“On what evidence? You puzzle me, Arturo—relying so heavily on intuition for critical decisions.”The General’s black pupils became steely hard.“And you are a man of facts, Dr.Hudson.Precise scientific facts.” Munoz fingered the burnished gold cross which hung from his neck.“I am—and there is a concise scientific answer for every question.”“Don’t be so sure of that.I’ll tell you one thing.Anyone that can make a ball of burning trash speak to me has my undivided attention.The voice told me to use Malloy, and I’m damn sure not going against its wishes.Hell, Dick—maybe that was God himself.Speaking to ME!”“Okay, okay.This Malloy—can he be trained?”“Anyone can be trained,” Munoz said.“You know that.And Malloy knows a pilot—one of the three-hundred on whom we have files.”“Oh?”“Javik,” Colonel Peebles said.“He’s a ruffian.”“Funny thing though,” Munoz said.‘This Javik is sharp, maybe the best we can find.He knows the Akron class space cruiser and has exceptional reaction times.” Munoz lifted a manila folder from the coffee table, handed it to Hudson.Hudson thumbed through Javik’s dossier file.“He’s had mass-driver mechanics training, too.Odd that he’d know Malloy.They went to high school together.”“Javik is bull-headed and quick-tempered!” Peebles said.Hudson nodded.“Poor attitude quotient,” he said, reading from the report.“Gets in fights all the time.”Munoz shook his head in exasperation, spoke tersely to Peebles: “His bull-headedness.as you call it.was actually independent decision-making.He took out an entire enemy fighter squadron with one star class cruiser—”“And a Major’s jaw with one punch,” Peebles said.“I saw him knock Neil Smalley down.In fact, it was my testimony that got Javik tossed out of the service.”“The decisions he made were absolutely correct,” Munoz insisted.“His only error was in striking an officer.Major Smalley shouldn’t have pressed him about procedures.”“It won’t matter anyway,” Peebles said, raising his blond eyebrows.“He’s on a six-day pass and is nowhere to be found.I’ll bet he’s shacked up.”“You’re going to send Javik and Malloy on this mission together?’ Hudson asked, looking at Munoz.Munoz nodded, then glanced at Peebles.“You’ll find Javik, Allen,” Munoz said, smiling knowingly, “.when you hear what I have in store for him.”Peebles did not reply, stared at the General impertinently.“The ejection pods on his ship will be disconnected, and the rocket engines will have a certain.” Munoz paused, glanced at Hudson with a mischievous smile.Hudson returned the smile.“I believe planned obsolescence is the term for which you were searching, General,” he said.“The radio has been prepared similarly.”Peebles brightened.“That sounds pretty good.”“And no rescue craft anywhere in the vicinity,” Munoz said.‘The world will never know that a comet really threatened us, or that he stopped it.”“What about an enforcer?” Peebles asked.The General raised an eyebrow.“An enforcer?”“Yessss,” Peebles said, his voice a cruel purr.“Conceivably, Javik could repair anything you disconnect.And we don’t want any chance of him getting off a distress call.”“True.”“Let’s send along Madame Bernet.” An evil, purse-lipped smile danced along Peebles’s mouth.“Ahh!” Munoz caressed his mustache.“The Montreal Slasher!” He turned to Hudson.“The meckie is available?’“Yes,” Hudson said.“Just back from a mission.Madame Bernet silenced eight guys on that one.permanently.”“This will be delicious,” Peebles said, smiling like a death’s head.“But alas,” he added sadly, “it will be the last mission for our finest killer meckie.”Munoz rubbed his temple.“Bring Malloy and Javik to me,” he said.Four hours later, inside the Black Box of Democracy.With his ankles crossed beneath his body, the tall fat man known as Onesayer Edward sat naked on a blue and gold prayer rug with one hand resting on each knee.Soft morning rays of sunlight from an overhead skylight warmed his bare shoulders and the back of his shaved head.Flicking a downward glance at his pendulous stomach and at the great folds of flesh which cascaded to the rug from every part of his body, he imagined that he must resemble a wallowing hippopotamus.Onesayer grimaced at a surge of pain from one ankle, tried to think the things he was supposed to think.The prayer rug was on a loft of Onesayer’s private Black Box of Democracy penthouse, and in the background he heard the soft, lilting notes of the Hymn of Freeness.Uncle Rosy had written that tune.It was the theme song of the Sayerhood.Gazing at a burnished bust of Uncle Rosy which rested on the leading edge of the rug in a pool of sunlight, he noted the floating red arrow at the sculpture’s base pointed straight ahead and sharply down.This indicated the precise location of Uncle Rosy’s immense chair on the main level of the building.An inscription on all four sides of the bust’s pedestal carried the admonition: “Keep The Faith
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