Charles took it calmly. “We must have the full confidence of all involved,” he said. “I’ll transfer a technical report on the passages, but I see no need to go into details here. We accomplished what we set out to do. There was a major problem, and it injured all of us, and badly disoriented one of our people. Until this group is fully confident again, I concur with the Vice President.”

From most there rose an audible sigh of relief.

“I would like more experiments,” Ti Sandra said. Eyes turned back to her. “How quickly could Mercury travel to an unclaimed asteroid?”

‘To find an asteroid of sufficient size, rendezvous with it…“ Leander mused, and began figuring quickly on his slate.

“Two months,” Charles said, beating him to the answer. “Almost certainly, we’ll need to have our problems with Earth resolved before then.”

“If there’s so little time,” Ti Sandra said, “the risks of kidnapping a few asteroids might be too extreme.” She considered for a moment, weighing the options, and shook her head. “No. We can’t take the chance.”

Charles looked between us, a quiet, chastened little boy.

“I can’t thank all of you enough,” Ti Sandra said quietly.

“We feel as if we’ve failed them,” Leander said as the President’s entourage filed out. Ti Sandra stayed behind. She stood, steadying herself against the table. I approached her and she wrapped her arms around me.

“How does it feel to make history?” she whispered.

“Scary,” I whispered back. “Parts of it… indescribable.”

“I think I’d like to try it sometime,” she said, glancing at me conspiratorially. “But I agree. Not Mars. Not with things the way they are now.”

“It was never more than a pipe-dream anyway,” Charles said. “Was it, Casseia?”

I did not know how to answer. Ti Sandra stepped forward, her legs steady but gait slow, and shook their hands. “You’ve done momentous things,” she said, and her resonant voice and motherly manner gave the words impact beyond cliche. “Mars can never be grateful enough.” She clasped my hands in both of hers, laughed softly, and said, “And probably wouldn’t be grateful, even it if knew.”

“It was getting difficult to keep everybody in agreement,” Leander admitted.

“It’s difficult to realize the predicament we’re in,” Ti Sandra said.

“The predicament hasn’t gone away,” Charles said, sitting forward and clasping his hands. “We’ve learned some interesting things in the past few hours. There’s lots of activity on Earth’s Moon.”

“Lieh tells me Terrestrial authorities have taken over Ice Pit Station,” Ti Sandra said. “What does that mean?”

“Let’s go to the main lab,” Charles said. “If the President is feeling well enough…”

“I’ll last a few more hours,” Ti Sandra said. “Lead on.”

The center of Preamble, the main lab occupied a chamber half a hectare in area, divided by heavy steel curtains into three spaces. The dark gray ceiling arched ten meters over the middle, broken by tracks of focused lighting and life support conduits. The smallest of the spaces was the most important, near the side of the chamber, away from the shielded power supplies. Charles led the way, Leander following. The President and I flanked Leander.

Nehemiah Royce, Tamara Kwang and Mitchell Maspero-Gambacorta sat in chairs near a table that supported two QLs with integral interpreters. I had not seen these particular units; they had been installed in the past few days.

“We’re finished educating and updating the QLs,” Tamara said, glancing at us uncertainly. “They’re informed.” Her head carried several small nano connectors; the plan had been for her to back up Charles in an emergency.

“Good,” Charles said. “I’d like to show the President and Vice President what we know about the Ice Pit.”

Tamara and Nehemiah worked for a few moments to bring up displays controlled by the interpreter: graphs and charts and picts showing fluctuations in quantities as yet unexplained to us. One vid picture, however, was very clear: a crisp, full-color, three-dimensional view of a hallway filled with men and women and arbeiters carrying equipment.

‘This is a direct link, optical transfer,“ Charles said. ”The Ice Pit contains a huge Pierce region — the tweaker that William Pierce made by accident. It’s a larger version of our own, ready-made. We’re looking at a laboratory just outside the Ice Pit.“

“Live?” Ti Sandra asked.

“Next best thing to being there,” Royce said, smiling.

“Do they know we’re looking at them? And what are we looking through?” I asked.

“We can adjust part of the shielding around the Ice Pit region to have optical properties,” Charles said. “The region — the tweaker — can transmit images and sound back to our own tweaker,” Charles said. “They’ve dug out a chamber next to the Ice Pit, set up a research center. They’re not aware that we’re spying on them.”

“The Ice Pit region and all of our Pierce regions are the same,” Nehemiah said. “All tweakers are essentially coexistent.”

“Tweaker…” Ti Sandra said.

“We call it a tweaker when we adjust things with it. The Ice Pit tweaker appears larger than ours, but that doesn’t matter. They’re conterminous, and continuous.”

“Just an example of the identity of all undescribed elements in the dataflow matrix,” Nehemiah said.

“That makes it much more clear,” Ti Sandra said.

Nehemiah struggled onward. ‘Tweakers are undescribed, blank. They can become anything.“

“We’ll stick with the important issues for now,” Charles said. “They seem to know how significant the Ice Pit is, and they seem to know what to do with it. Notice these things…” He pointed to several rounded cubes resting in intricate slings. “High-level thinkers. At least one of them is a QL, but we’ve never seen thinkers like them. Large, probably very powerful.”

“More subtle and multiplex than anything we can manufacture,” Nehemiah said.

“Coming to the Moon to use the Ice Pit means they haven’t been able to create their own tweaker,” Leander said.

“Perhaps,” Charles said. “But they may be sequestering the Ice Pit to keep anybody else from getting access. We could learn how much they know right now, if you give us permission.”

Ti Sandra spoke in an undertone to one of her guards, and he stood aside to pass her orders along through his slate. “How?” she asked, turning back to us.

“If they know this is a direct link, they can receive signals from us. They’re listening to it — so to speak — right now. That’s what we did at first, to understand the nature of a tweaker. We can make the Ice Pit tweaker resonate and pass them a message.”

Lieh entered the space and stood beside Ti Sandra. Leander quickly explained the image and its implications.

“What would we say to them?” Ti Sandra asked.

“If we’ve given up any plan to leave the Solar System, then we need to resume full and public negotiations with Earth immediately,” Charles said. “We could use this as a faster, more efficient channel. But… it would have the effect of startling them.”

Ti Sandra grimaced. “If we talk to them, assure them of our peaceful intentions,” she said, “will that be enough? How can they believe us, after what’s happened?”

“They must believe,” Charles said. “We’re sunk if they don’t. Somebody will make a pre-emptive strike.”

Ti Sandra snorted. “ ‘Pre-emptive.’ That word… so twentieth century.”

“They must also be made to believe we have complete control of Preamble,” Leander continued. “That there are no splinter groups or dissenters with the same capability.”

Ti Sandra nodded to Lieh. “I’m afraid Point One doesn’t have good news for us. Tell us the details, Lieh.”

“Earth’s a shambles right now, politically,” Lieh said. “They’re paralyzed by unending plebiscites. There have been recalls on every board member and syndic of the four major alliances. Ambassadors have been recalled for consultation.”