“That has to be true, sir,” I blurted. “Ten thousand ordinary mortals can’t keep a secret or act a role.”

“Obvious.” Tick-tick.“How did you, or rather your predecessors, avoid massacring their own populace?”

“Well, everybody thanked his luck that he’d not been in a target area or was evacuated in time,” Brenner said. “He heard about casualties, but they’d always happened somewhere else, in places where nobody lived that he knew. He couldn’t check up, supposing it occurred to him. Sibylla never had global electronic communications, or fast transport except for some official flitters. What did exist—like a newspaper or three—was lost when the towns went. Took quite a spell even to re-establish a mail service. Meanwhile everything was confused, and refugees were getting relocated among strangers, and—The stunt wasn’t easy, Dad told me. But it did come off. Later, histories and chronicles and such were written; and who had reason to suspect them? Everybody knew our numbers were way below the original forecasts, and dwindling. But accurate pre-disaster figures were filed only in certain heads now, that kept their mouths shut. And nobody had time to sit down and think hard. So it came to be taken for granted that the loss of people was mainly, if not entirely, due to the attack and its aftermath. I assure you, sir, nearly everyone among us honestly believes in the alien enemy.”

His gaze challenged d’Indre. “Do what you like to me and my partners,” he said. “We were ready for this, if the truth should come out. But you can’t punish ten thousand who also got foxed!”

“Presumably the Director will not wish to do so,” d’lndre said as if stating a theorem. “Nevertheless, the problem of assimilating them, so that they can make a living on this overcrowded world, may well prove insoluble. And individuals are apt to be subjected to mob violence. And it is politically impossible to send them to a different planet, when so many others desire that for themselves. Did the conspirators foresee this?”

“Yes,” Brenner said. He sat straight. The big fists clenched on his knees. “But there was no mucking choice. We had to get off Sibylla. We—my father’s group—didn’t think Earth would fetch us just because we were slowly dying. We’d already gotten too many refusals of our pleas for help, only a little help. ‘Too expensive,’ we were told. ‘They cope with the same problems elsewhere. Why can’t you?’ Unquote.

“Expensive!” The word ripped from him, together with a detonating obscenity. I started where I sat. D’Indre did not change expression, but he stopped tapping that pencil. Brenner clamped lips together, took a breath, and went doggedly on: ‘‘To be quite frank, sir, on the basis of what knowledge I have, I wouldn’t put it past certain officials to fake incoming messages from a colony that stopped sending.”

For the first time, I saw d’lndre lose color. The pencil broke in his fingers. Doubtless Brenner noticed too, for he paused through several still seconds before he finished: “Survival knows no law. My father and his men created a false enemy so their grandchildren could be saved from the real one.”