Ivan watched with interest as the technician got up and left without a word. The noises and vibrations of a working crew had been dying off for the last couple of hours. They were evacuating, and that could mean only one thing. The military was making their move.

He’d attempted to phone Jennings’s lawyers, right after the face-off with Admiral Moore. And, of course, the phone was dead. Ivan was cut off. They wouldn’t do that if they had any expectation he’d ever be in a position to complain about it. Which meant he was going to be either dead or buried, very soon.

Well, he’d wanted to shake loose a reaction. Mission accomplished. The Navy had reacted, and things were on the move. The question, of course, was just what was the move? Were they going to fake his death, then seal him in a lab for the rest of his life? Or were they really going to kill him?

And how would Ralph react? If Ivan thought the military was just going to nuke him, maybe the best thing he could do for his family would be to lie down and allow it. Assuming Ralph would let him do that. And that left the question of the Arts. If Ivan allowed himself to be eliminated, and the Arts showed up with humanity unprepared, it was a certain death sentence for the human race. That much Ralph had made abundantly clear.

If it was the other possibility, and they stuck him in a lab somewhere… Sooner or later Ralph would get tired of waiting for Ivan to get it together and take over. If that happened, he’d have no opportunity to influence Ralph’s decisions.

Plus, I really don’t want to die. But I really don’t want to end up a guinea pig for the rest of forever, either. I need to be able to make a decision once I’m communicating properly with Ralph. For that, I need to be alive and free.

Okay, then, time to bail. He’d been preparing for days. Time to execute Operation Bug-Out.

He looked up at the video camera in the upper corner of his room, then went and lay down in his bunk and closed his eyes.

Ten seconds later, he sat up. The nanites in the camera would continue to transmit an image of him lying on his bed until he called them off, or they died in a nuclear blast. Either/or.

Ivan walked to the airlock door that separated his living quarters from the rest of the module. He pulled on the door, and it separated cleanly from the wall, the thin layer of metal that had been holding it in place parting without a struggle.