Four video screens were mounted in one wall. Innumerable repeaters had been wired into most of the consoles. Only one of the big screens was on, showing a fuzzy picture of the Stone itself surrounded by data readouts. That was a picture from the Drake: just as he had first seen the Stone, four years ago.

Pickney handed him a pair of Velcro galoshes. "It hasn't started yet," she said. "But there's been an alert. Something's hit the fan but we're not sure what it is. Put this on." She wrapped earphones and mike around his head. "I've been getting everything coordinated for the past half hour."

"Orders yet?"

"Nothing specific. Just the alert."

He sat where he was told and a bank of keyboards and viewers was moved near to him. Captain Kirchner and his aide, a young mustachioed lieutenant commander dressed in khakis, entered a few minutes later and were seated a few meters away in similar accommodations.

Kirchner, in charge of external Stone defense, was really the central figure now. Gerhardt was in the first chamber, making preparations; but for the moment, what happened in the chambers was incidental. "Get fifteen men outside the bore hole with portable detection systems," Kirchner said. "I want them hidden behind those honey-comb walls, out of sight—no heat signatures. And get those goddamned Gatling guns in position."

Quiet descended. Pickney, earphones clamped over her short, bobbed hair, listened intently. A burst of static issued from a speaker on the other side of the room.

On the largest screen before Lanier, a picture flicked on, wavered and steadied into crystal clarity. The source was a camera just outside the bore hole, in the honeycombed dimple. The camera was oriented toward the Earth at that moment. The limb of the Earth, still in darkness, came into focus. The picture shuffled twice as enhancers did their work. Lanier could then make out continents, cloud patterns, city lights in the night. They were within a few minutes of being nearest their orbital path to Earth—less than three thousand kilometers.

A crackly radio voice came over their headphones. "Heavensent, Heavensent, this is Red Cube. Alert situation Remarkable."

"Shit," Kirchner murmured.

"Bears have just announced their end run. Captain Kirchner, we are devising responses now. Your situation is unknown. Please advise."

"We are secure and making preparations," Kirchner said.

Red Cube—the Joint Space Command western headquarters in Colorado—came back with, "You are now out of our response pattern, Captain. We must conduct affairs as if you did not exist. The steam in the sweatbox is thick. Looks like they're going to take out our near-Earth capability. Understood?"

"Understood. Hope to God you can keep them in line, Red Cube."

"Heavensent is now on its own, Captain."

"Yes, sir."

The transmission ended.

"My screen shows an OTV approach," Kirchner said. "Is it identified?"

"OTV forty-five, carrying supplies and reinforcement personnel, launched nine hours ago from Station Sixteen," Pickney said. "We've been monitoring."