In the darkness she heard a rapid-fire
The fingers of fear enclosed her and her mind said to her, like the cold, unpassionate voice of a stranger:
The light came on again, a feeble glow, and there was the soft, muffled sound of questioning voices in the other compartments. She dressed, her fingers shaking and clumsy, wishing that Dale would come to reassure her; to tell her that nothing really serious had happened, that it had not been the Gerns.
It was very still in the little compartment—strangely so. She had finished dressing when she realized the reason: the air circulation system had stopped working. That meant the power failure was so great that the air regenerators, themselves, were dead. And there were eight thousand people on the
…
The
“War was declared upon Earth by the Gern Empire ten days ago. Two Gern cruisers have attacked us and their blasters have destroyed the stern and bow of the ship. We are without a drive and without power but for a few emergency batteries. I am the
“None of you will leave your compartments until ordered to do so. Wherever you may be, remain there. This is necessary to avoid confusion and to have as many as possible in known locations for future instructions. I repeat: you will not leave your compartments.”
The speaker cut off. She stood without moving and heard again the words:
The Gerns had killed her father.
He had been second-in-command of the Dunbar expedition that had discovered the world of Athena and his knowledge of Athena was valuable to the colonization plans. He had been quartered among the ship’s officers—and the Gern blast had destroyed that section of the ship. She sat down on the edge of the bed again and tried to reorient herself; to accept the fact that her life and the lives of all the others had abruptly, irrevocably, been changed. The Athena Colonization Plan was ended. They had known such a thing might happen—that was why the
Success or failure of the Athena Plan had meant ultimate life or death for Earth. They had taken every precaution possible but the Gern spy system had somehow learned of Athena and the
*
*
*
Billy sighed and stirred in the little-boy sleep that had not been broken by the blasts that had altered the lives of eight thousand people and the fate of a world. She shook his shoulder and said, “Billy.”
He raised up, so small and young to her eyes that the question in her mind was like an anguished prayer:
He saw her face, and the dim light, and the sleepiness was suddenly gone from him.
“What’s wrong, Mama? And why are you scared?”
There was no reason to lie to him.
“The Gerns found us and stopped us.”
“Oh,” he said. In his manner was the grave thoughtfulness of a boy twice his age, as there always was. “Will they—will they kill us?”