“You keep saying we. But just who are ‘we’?”
Maureen’s face grew grave. “We started out as a joke, and now it looks as though we may mean the salvation of Earth. We . . . well, I guess you’d call us a secret society. We don’t have a name, and we don’t have a ritual or fancy officers; but that’s what we are. I don’t know if Hesketh ever mentioned or hinted at us?”
“No.” But now Garrett understood Uranov’s several cryptic allusions to “some people he knew,” and the signals with which he had induced Dr. Wojcek to speak freely.
“It was Mig Valentinez who invented us, though he was usually too wrapped up with some artistic or scientific project to take much part. But he felt that the peace was going stale. That people were beginning to accept it as something to wallow in rather than something to keep fighting for. So he founded his crusaders, to keep fighting the little things, to keep alive against the small violations of Devarupa’s thought, the petty inhumanities of man to man—maybe even do a little propaganda and build to where people could finally unite and fight in something like the Martian project.
“Then a little while after Mig went away to be a hermit, we stumbled on something big: the lovestonite business. Hesketh says that’s where you come in, and you know a lot about it. Right?”
“I’ve gathered some. I know what the weapon is and how it works and what Stag Hartle is up to and why Valentinez was killed.”
“You’re sure he was?”
“Hartle admitted it.”
“He was a good guy, that Mig—” Maureen said tenderly. “Well, anyway, you know enough for background now.”
“Except what you’re doing here. Oh, that’s right. S.B. said something about coming up here with Astra Ardless and a shooting company.”
“Yes.” Maureen’s voice was harsh. “And that didn’t sound funny to you?”
“No. Should it have? Oh— What Uranov told me about locations—”
“Exactly. There are in California landscaped locations under dome for every possible type of setting, including lunar. So why should S.B. go to the expense of toting a vast number of extras and all his equipment up here to shoot the picture under less favorable conditions? Except for documentaries, nobody’s made location trips in decades.”
“Then you think—”
“We think this is what it’s all been building up to. He’s ready for his big coup. His first blow is going to be here on the Moon.”
“Then Hartle’s here?”
“Hartle, hell. S.B. Didn’t you realize that Hartle was just a stooge? This whole lovestonite racket has been S.B. from the beginning.”
Garrett took more brandy. “All right,” he said. “S.B. is set to blow the top off of things, and we’re going to stop him. Do I count as one of ‘we’ now?”
“You do,” said Maureen.
“Then what’s my first duty?”
“Look. This takes a little explaining. The boys that brought you in and the ones you saw outside are us. But there’s a lot more extras here, and they’re not here to function as extras. What they are is S.B.’s mercenaries.
“You noticed the fantastic make-up? They’re all supposed to be natives of Mars when the first spaceship arrived, and nobody but a producer would think of shooting a Martian picture on a lunar landscape but the public’ll never know the difference and that’s hardly the point now, anyway. But in that getup there’s no recognizing individuals, and we don’t wear our bracelets most of the time. So a handful of us are going to slip into the dome where S.B. is staying—with Astra installed as empresselect. We ll seem to be just part of his army.”
“And then—”
“We’ll have a council of war tonight and get that straight. Hesketh and I are in the party and two others. Want to make it five?”
“What do you think?”
“Good. That’s settled. Now come and meet us.”
As she rose, Garrett gently thrust her back into the chair. “Just a minute. The Secretary of Allocation gave me this swizard to use in starting conversations about lovestonite. I’m not apt to find that necessary any more. You like swizards. Want it?”
“A Kubicek? You’re giving me a Kubicek swizard? And do I want it?”
He detached the swizard from his identification bracelet and fastened it onto hers. As he leaned over her, her lips met him halfway. There was a little more than gratitude in the kiss.
Maureen eventually leaned back and ran a straightening hand through her rumpled black hair. “And, by the way,” she said, “what’s your name?”
Gan Garrett listened to his fellow extras:
“He’s what we’ve needed all along—one strong man to tell us what’s what.”
“Sure. That’s the hell of the State. There’s a lot of guys running it and who are they and who cares?”
“And what are they running it for? Peace—nuts!”
“What’s peace? Blood and steel, that’s what we need.”
“You don’t draw blood with these pistols, though.”
“But have you ever got to use one full strength? Watch a face shrivel up and burn under it and the eyes go dead?”
“And blood or not, they kill if you use them strong enough. And there’s no power without killing.”
“Power— That’s ours now.”
“Ours under him.”
“Yeah, sure. Under him—”
Hesketh Uranov listened to his fellow extras:
“But, my dear fellow, of course I welcomed this plan. I was simply so unutterably bored—”
“I know. If they want to maintain peace, they should never let us study the past. You read of all those thrilling events of history, and you begin to wonder. There’s a strange sort of yearning goes through your muscles—”
“Of course the man’s a fool. But if a fool chooses to provide us with weapons—”
“A world. A whole entire rounded world. The legions of Caesar never held anything like that. Even the Nazis never reached all the way into Asia. And we—”
“It’s farewell to boredom now.”
Maureen Furness listened to her fellow extras:
“—and the way it’s changed the men! Why, everything’s so different it doesn’t feel like the same thing any more.”
“A man really isn’t a man unless he’s killed somebody, I always say.”
“But
