“Which might be happening even as we speak,” Namir said. “Or after however long it takes his message to be picked up by the Others.”

“Comforting prospect,” I said.

“And an interesting thought experiment,” Moonboy said. “If they did destroy the Earth, should we try to destroy them in turn? Or should we go someplace safe and try to restart the human race?”

“I’m a fearsome interstellar warrior,” Namir said. “I’m not changing diapers.”

“I don’t think we have any diapers aboard,” I said, “nor ovulating women.”

“I can fix the ovulation,” Elza said. “And we could improvise diapers and such. But really, where could we go, to play Adam and Eve, if we couldn’t go back to Earth?”

“Mars,” Fly-in-Amber said. “It’s a nicer place anyhow.”

We got the ersatz news broadcasts from Earth, but of course they weren’t beamed, and were too weak and distorted by noise to be worth everyday amplifying and cleaning up. Namir had some experience and expertise to apply to it, though, and eventually had decoded about six hours of broadcasts prior to noon of July 3, when Lazlo Motkin had made his imperial request. All we found were two small stories, one a pro forma announcement that Lazlo was going to run for president of the United States on a third-party ticket, and the other a human-interest story about how he and his wife formed the Free America party and, working through several religious denominations, got enough signatures and funding to put himself on the ballot in several Southern states.

So how to interpret the tight-beam message to us? Probably just a crazy rant. But suppose the rest of the news was sanitized, and there really had been a theocratic revolution in the United States?

Paul raised that possibility during dinner, rehydrated mushrooms fried with pretty convincing butter over corn cakes, with actual green onions from the farm, our first crop.

“Doesn’t make sense,” Dustin said, “unless it’s a very levelheaded theocracy. Why would they censor the news of their victory?”

“Maybe they’re not idiots,” Namir said. “Even theocrats might not want to invite the Others to their victory parade.”

“The real question is what our response should be,” Paul said. “I’m inclined to play it straight; tell them thanks, but no thanks. We’re going to stick with the original plan.”

“Which is to make it up as we go along,” I said.

“Or just don’t respond at all,” Namir said. “He sent that a week ago. He knows our answer would take a week or eight days. If he’s still in control of that powerful laser transponder a couple of weeks from now, that tells us something.”

Meryl shook her head. “You’re presupposing that the Earth authorities are aware that he’s done this. I think he’s just a rich fruitcake out in the middle of the ocean with his laser transponder and delusions of grandeur.”