stolen that ship.'
'Occam's Razor,' said Marda.
'Occam's-? Oh. No. Either way, I have to make just too many assumptions.'
'Lit, how can you take the chance? If Garner isn't lying, the whole solar system's in danger. If he is, what's his motive?'
'You're really convinced, aren't you?'
Marda bobbed her head vigorously.
'Well, you're right. We can't take the chance.'
When he came out of the phone booth he said, 'I just sent the fleet the record of my interview with Garner. The whole bloody hour. I'd like to do more, but Garner'll hear everything I say. At this distance he's bound to be in the maser beam.'
'They'll be ready this way.'
'I wonder. I wish I could have warned them about the helmet. The very worst thing I can think of is that Garner might get his hands on the damn thing. Well, Lew's bright, he'll think of that himself.'
Later he called Ceres again, to find out how the other side of the check was going. For more than two weeks now, Belt ships had been stopping and searching Earth ships at random. If Garner's snark hunt was an attempt to cover something, it wasn't going to work! But Ceres reported no results to date.
Ceres was wrong. The search-and-seizure tactics had had at least one result. Tension had never been so high between Earth and Belt.
The copilot sat motionless listening to Kzanol/Greenberg's side of the conversation. He couldn't understand overspeak, but Kzanol/Greenberg could; and Kzanol listened to the shielded slave through the mind of the copilot.
'I ought to get rid of you right away,' Kzanol mused. 'A slave that can't be controlled can't be trusted.'
'That's truer than you know.' A hint of bitterness showed in Kzanol/Greenberg's voice. 'But you can't kill me yet. I have some information that you need very badly.'
'So? What information?'
'I know where the second suit is. I also know why we weren't picked up, and I've figured out where the rrgh- where our race is now.'
Kzanol said, 'I think I also know where the second suit is. But for whatever else you may know, I won't kill you.'
'Big of you.' Kzanol/Greenberg waved the disintegrator negligently. 'I'll tell you something you can't use first, to prove I know my stuff. Did you know whitefoods were intelligent?'
'Whitefood droppings.'
'Humans have found them on Sirius A-III-1. They're definitely whitefoods. They're also definitely sentient. Can you think of any way they could have developed intelligence?'
'No.'
'Of course not. If any form of life has ever been mutation-proof, it's the whitefoods. Besides, what does a herbivore with no manipulatory appendages, and no natural defenses except sentient herders to kill off natural enemies, want with intelligence? No, the tnuctipun must have made them sentient in the first place. Making the brains a delicacy was just an excuse for making them large.'
Kzanol sat down. His mouth tendrils stood straight out, as if he were smelling with them. 'Why should they do that?'
He was hooked.
'Let me give it to you all in one bundle,' said Kzanol/Greenberg. He took off his helmet and sat, found and lighted a cigarette, taking his time, while Kzanol grew silently but visibly enraged. There was no reason why the thrint shouldn't get angry, Kzanol/Greenberg thought, as long as he didn't get
'All right,' he began. 'First point is that the whitefoods are sentient. Second point, you remember that there was a depression when Plorn's tnuctipun came up with antigravity.'
'Powerloss, yes,' Kzanol said fervently and untactfully. 'He should have been assassinated right away.'
'Not him. His tnuctipun. Don't you see? They were fighting an undeclared war even then. The free tnuctipun must have been behind it all the time: the tnuctip fleet that escaped into space when Thrintun found the tnuctip system. They didn't try to reach Andromeda. They must have stayed between the stars, where nobody ever goes… went. A few civilized tnuctip must have taken their orders. The whitefoods were their spies; every noble in the galaxy, everyone who could afford to, used to keep whitefoods on his land.'
'You're a ptavv fool. You're basing all these suppositions on the idiotic idea that whitefoods are intelligent. That's nonsense. We'd have sensed it.'
'No. Check with Masney if you don't believe me. Somehow the tnuctipun must have developed a whitefood brain that was immune to the Power. And that one fact makes it certain that the whole ploy was deliberate. The whitefood spies. The antigravity, released to cause a depression. There may have been other ideas, too. Mutated racing viprin were introduced a few years before antigravity. Thea put all the legitimate viprin ranches out of business. That started the depression, and antigravity sped it along. The sunflowers were usually the only defense for a plantation; and everyone who had land had a sunflower border. It got the landowners used to isolation and independence, so that they might not cooperate in wartime. I'd give odds the tnuctipun had a spray to kill sunflowers. When the depression was in full swing they struck.'
Kzanol didn't speak. His expression was hard to read. 'This isn't all supposition. I've got solid facts. First, the bandersnatchi, whitefoods to us, are sentient. Humans aren't stupid. They wouldn't make a mistake like that. Second, it's a fact that you weren't picked up when you hit F124. Why?'
'That is an ingesting good question. Why?'
This was the starting point, the hurt that had rankled in Kzanol/Greenberg's breast for sixteen days of retrospection and introspection, sixteen days during which he had had nothing to do but supervise Masney and brood on his bad luck. His mind had followed a path that started with a brooding, silent bandersnatch and ended in a war fought aeons ago. But he could have missed it all, he might have been spared all this torment and danger, if only that fool of a caretaker had seen the Dash. He had not, and there could be only one reason.
'Because there wasn't anyone on the Moon. Either the caretaker was killed in the revolt, or he was off fighting somewhere. Probably he was dead. The tnuctipun would have moved at once to cut off our food supply.'
'To what?' Kzanol was clearly lost. Thrintun had never fought anything but other Thrintun, and the last war had been fought before star travel. Kzanol knew nothing of war.
The thrint tried to get back to basics. 'You said you could tell me where the Thrintun are now.'
'With the tnuctipun. They're dead, extinct. If they weren't dead they would have reached Earth by now. That goes for the tnuctipun too, and nearly every other species that served us. They must have all died in the war.'
'But that's insane. Somebody has to win a war!'
He sounded so sincere that Kzanol/Greenberg laughed. 'Not so. Ask any human. Ask a Russian or a Chinese. They'll think you're a fool for needing to ask, but they'll tell you all about Pyrrhic victory. Shall I tell you what may have happened?'
He didn't wait for an answer. 'This is pure conjecture, but it makes sense to me, and I've had two weeks to think about it. We must have been losing the war. If we were, some thraargh- excuse me. Some members of our race must have decided to take all the slaves with them. Like Grandfather's funeral ceremony, but bigger. They made an amplifier helmet strong enough to blanket the entire galaxy. Then they ordered everything within reach to commit suicide.'
'But that's a horrible attitude!' Kzanol bristled with moral outrage. 'Why would a thrint do a thing like that?'
'Ask a human. He knows what sentients are capable of when someone threatens them with death. First they declaim that the whole thing is horribly immoral, and that it's unthinkable that such a threat would ever be carried out. Then they reveal that they have similar plans, better in every respect, and have had them for years, decades, centuries. You admit the Big Amplifier would have been technically feasible?'
'Of course.'
