Commodore Gerrard swiveled his chair to face Moore. “In case you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, that’ll be a very hard sell. Pritchard doesn’t have to prove that he’s human. He was human a couple of months ago; he has a birth certificate, a family, he pays taxes. It’s up to you to prove that he isn’t. And he’s got enough money to throw lawyers at us for the rest of forever.”

“Yes,” Moore conceded, “and his crewmates won’t let it drop if he just disappears. And they can’t just disappear, thanks to Captain Jennings’s metaphorical dead-man switch. Unfortunately, we are potentially faced off against people who are rich, intelligent, have had weeks to think things through, and have seen enough bad movies to automatically see us as the enemy.”

“Given what you’re not quite suggesting, Ted, they may be right on that last point.”

Moore snorted. “I’m not suggesting anything definite, yet, Michael.” He looked around the table. “I am suggesting that Pritchard, as a problem, is not going to go away. And I feel confident in predicting that we won’t be turning him back into a human being. You read the reports. Those things evaporated him! We will, at some point, have to make a decision about him, regardless of your political or moral stance. I want you all to start thinking about this. Consider especially the uncomfortable scenarios, because those are the ones that will require hard decisions. The easy ones are, well, easy.”

Around the table, frowns and pursed lips showed that he’d scored a hit.

Admiral Castillo leaned forward and straightened the papers in front of him. Moore spent a moment admiring the move, a classic piece of upstaging. Without uttering a word, Castillo had all attention focused on him.

“Sers, Admiral Moore has the right of it. But I’m going to suggest we should take it further. It may be, in the fullness of time, that we will conclude that Pritchard is not a threat. But right now we don’t know that. I’d like to see us prepare for the worst-case scenario.”

“What do you have in mind, Admiral?” Commodore Gerrard kept a carefully neutral tone, but Moore could see the tension in his jaw.

A quick flip through his papers, and Castillo held up a thick stapled bundle. “We had discussed a failsafe option early in this process. Narang kicked up too much of a fuss, but perhaps it’s time to resurrect the plan. This is a proposal for a nuclear failsafe. Attached to the isolation module, it would guarantee that we could completely remove any threat, should one materialize.”

“A nuke?” Gerrard shook his head. “In Earth orbit? Imagine the reaction if we actually detonated it. And by the way, these are civilians, Admiral!”