* * *

Jules d’Indre sat behind his desk, a shriveled, fussily dressed man whom it was wise to respect. He nodded, quick dip of bald head, as Brenner and I came in. “Be seated, citizens,” he did not invite, he ordered.

I found the edge of a chair. My pulse thuttered and my palms were wet. Brenner leaned back, meeting those eyes, faintly smiling. “How d’you do, sir?” he drawled.

“Let us not waste words,” d’Indre said. “Perhaps you are not aware how uncommon a physical confrontation in line of business is on Earth. I would normally use a vidiphone three-way, and during working hours. Can you guess why I did otherwise?”

“Informality,” Brenner said. “No record, no snoops, no commitments to anything. Suits me. We lived old-fashioned on Sibylla. Not that we wanted to, understand.” His smile departed, his voice grew crisp, I had a sense of sparks flying. “It gave us some old-fashioned ideas, however, like about the rights of man.”

D’Indre’s schoolmaster accent did not alter. “Rights are forfeited when one perpetrates a felony.”

“Who’s done what and with which unto whom?”

“The Colonial Fleet has been tied up on a useless mission for almost seventy years. Billions of munits have been spent.” D’Indre leaned forward. He tapped a pencil on the edge of the desk, tick-tick into an all-underlying silence. “The first thing I wish to know, Brenner, is how many were privy to the hoax.”

The leather visage sought mine. “What made you report the attack was faked?” Brenner asked calmly, even amiably.

“I didn’t want to,” burst from me. “I tried—everything—my whole team did. We couldn’t risk Earth being unprepared, if there was any chance a hostile fleet existed. And”—I noticed my hands reach toward him—“we didn’t want to hurt you!”

“I know,” he said, briefly serious. His tone lightened again: “But I’ve got a curiosity. The fake was arranged by some mighty smart men. Time must’ve faded the evidence What put you on?”

“Oh…any number of things,” I forced myself to say. “Close study of certain pictures turned up some unlikely perspectives in them. Analysis of crater material gave results that were consistent with the explosion of stationary plants, not of warheads. Any warhead we could think of needs a fission trigger, or it’d be too bulky. Analyzing the bones of supposed missile victims, we got clear indications that they’d died years earlier. Some of the diaries and correspondence, allegedly from the immediate post-attack period, contradict each other more than is reasonable when you apply symbolic logic. I could go on, but it’s in the report. No single detail conclusive, but no doubt left after the whole jigsaw puzzle was fitted together.”

I wet my lips. “Sir,” I said to d’Indre, “our team discussed suppressing the facts. We decided we couldn’t do that to Earth. But you should know we did seriously consider it. We were that sorry for these people.”

Tick-tick. “You have not answered my question, Brenner.”

“Hey?” The Sibyllan coughed. “How many were in on the conspiracy? Just a few key men that my dad recruited. Still fewer today. The least number necessary to keep things shuffled around so nobody who wasn’t in on it would suspect.”