“Sadly true. Alan, you have some contacts in the Farside Skunkworks, right? Can you have a backchannel conversation? We wouldn’t need that much space, but it would have to be isolated. And quickly, please. The moment HQ sends us any kind of directive, we go from being proactive to being mutineers.”

Castillo nodded and rose from his chair. “Will do.”

* * *

“Pritchard wasn’t really very forthcoming, sir.” Lt. Bentley sat at the foot of the conference table, looking back at the usual six senior officers. “I can’t tell if it’s standard distrust of the military, or if he’s just playing dumb, seeing if I’ll admit to the monitoring. It comes as no surprise that he has the best poker face in the solar system.”

Several people chuckled, but no one commented.

“Sers,” Moore said, looking around the table. “It may be time to prove the cliché correct. We can’t just treat Mr. Pritchard like a hotel guest for the rest of his life—and we have no idea how long that might be. We need answers, especially given his recent comments to Dr. Kemp.”

“What do you propose, Admiral Moore?”

Moore looked at Admiral Castillo, his face carefully neutral. The two had arrived at an understanding, but it was important to remain publicly at arm’s length.

“Let’s start by being frank with Mr. Pritchard about the monitoring. Something tells me he won’t be particularly shocked. We’ll ask him some straightforward questions. If we get answers, then everything is fine. But if not, then we have to go to the next level.”

“And that would be…” Admiral Castillo was playing the part of antagonist beautifully. Moore made a note to be very careful when playing poker against him.

“Our agreement with the ICDC was that we would maintain isolation of the alien nanites at all costs. We made it very clear what that phrase means. If the nanites were about to get loose, we would be justified in blowing up the module. There’s even been discussion of moving it to one of the other Lagrange points and embedding a pocket nuke.” Moore very carefully didn’t look around the room. If any of the others already knew about the administrator’s plans, it would come out now. And Moore’s plan would be in the toilet.

“So we blow him up?” Castillo cocked his head.

“We blow up the module. Officially, because the nanites were getting loose. Officially, he’s dead. At that point, we have a free hand to use whatever means we see fit to get more information, without worrying about Civil Rights enforcers looking over our shoulder.” And more important, the scientists won’t be able to ship nanites to Earth anymore

The other officers looked shocked. Even Castillo looked shocked. Nice job, Alan.

* * *

Ivan looked up at movement in the observation window. It was Dr. Narang. He sat up.