“The Others and us,” she said, trying to control the anger in her voice. “Most of the people I know are on Mars, but I’m in touch with people on Earth all the time—”

“Who would risk the death penalty if they discussed reality. Everything’s monitored.” She was shaking her head, hard. “Look, even I assumed you were in on it. Self-censorship is so automatic. Nobody’s going to call or write, and say ‘They’ll kill me for saying this, but—’ ”

“But it’s so stupid! The Others aren’t going to be fooled.”

“There’s no way to know. It might just take one slip.”

“Maybe.” The angry set of her mouth softened. “It never occurred to me to ask for a paper copy of a newspaper. I mean, who ever sees one?”

“Everybody, nowadays.” Was some bureaucrat controlling the information they got, or was it an unintended consequence of draconian broadcast security? “You should ask for a Sunday New York Times—or I will. Say that I’m homesick. See whether they print up a special version with the news sanitized for us. I could tell.”

I asked, and eventually the newspaper did appear—it takes a week for anything to come up. It did seem to be the same paper I read every week. Significantly, it had Jude Coulter’s column, summarizing the past week’s news that had been suppressed from the Others. And people in orbit or on Mars, incidentally.

The first two ships of the fleet are nearing completion; both are already crewed, awaiting weapons systems. They’re somewhat bigger than the projected standard for the other 998, but cruder, rushed into construction in case the Other that left Triton five years ago left behind some belated surprise.

I think the fleet is a tactical travesty from inception to its present and future reality. Gnats attacking an elephant. If you want to protect the future of the human race from the Other menace, those resources should go toward moving breeding populations out far from Earth. Because Earth is unlikely to survive the first second of hostilities from the Others. A diffuse population hidden around the solar system might have a chance.

Or not.

10

NEW WORLD

Namir’s newspaper reassured us a little bit. There wasn’t a huge conspiracy trying to insulate us from reality. It was just a secondary effect of the fanatic security effort. So now we were to get the Times and one other newspaper every week. Delivered to your air-lock door.

Not a conspiracy, but certainly a pervasive bureaucratic mind-set. You don’t learn anything unless you have an official “need to know.”

It was probably an empty gesture anyhow, presuming to fool the Others with smoke and mirrors. Namir agreed. They had to know us too well for that to work.

What might have worked, if there had been enough advance warning, would have been to shut Earth down electronically, completely, the instant of the Moon explosion.

Even that would only have worked if the Others were just listening to broadcast emissions and not spying on Earth any other way. And it would have been impossible to build ad Astra and the fleet without electronic communication.