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How's Weinbaum doing with the negotiations?"
"Still delays. He thinks the Regents are waiting to see which way the wind
blows. They'll come over if there's a general uprising, and if Earth
doesn't look like bombing us out. Your little stunt ought to
convince them. But you've got your secondary contacts just in case, right?"
"Yes, sir," I said. We'd been given the names and locations of some friendly
station owners who'd hide us if the university people couldn't take care of
us.
"All's well, then," Farr said. "This is it. In a couple of hundred hours it
should be all over except for mopping up. GHQ out."
We carried the detonator into our blockhouse. Erica put it in her room.
"It seems too good to be true," I told her. "The war over "
"Maybe," Erica said. She looked at the box with its glowing lights. "Anyway,
my job's done. Nothing left to do but push a button at the right time. Until
then, there's nothing I can do. It's over."
"Over for us." I thought about my buddies back at the Rim. Sarge would be
leading an attack on
Hellastown. I wondered how many would be killed.
"Garrett, I don't know how you've stood up to all this," Erica said. "I'm
exhausted." She came over and put her arms around me. I held her close. We
kissed, then again.
"I thought you were exhausted," I said.
"Not that exhausted. Who's outside?"
"Don's in the main room -"
"Close the door. Then come here."
For a moment I thought about Eileen and I felt like a bloody heel, but then I
wasn't thinking about anything at all.
SEVENTEEN
We got our gear packed up and ready so we could run. After that there was
nothing to do but wait.
Erica and I stayed in the blockhouse. We had decided we wouldn't leave until
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the bomb went off. Later, Dr. Drury came in to have supper with us, while Doug
sat in Erica's room with the detonator.
"It will be a magnificent thing," Drury said. "Magnificent. Making over a
whole world. We can all be proud to have been part of it."
"It will take a long time," Erica said.
Drury nodded. "But we can speed it up. Melt off the polar caps -"
"They melt every summer anyway," I said.
"Not all of them. One melts, the other forms. But there are ways to keep them
melted. And there are layers of both poles that never melt at all. We've
studied this extensively. The Project can be speeded up enormously - and will
be, when the Federation gets out of the way."
I m glad we've got you people on our side, Erica said. She waved at the
blockhouse. "This would be a building to be proud of back home. Here it's just
a temporary thing at a research camp. You've got enormous capabilities at the
university."
"Thank you," Drury said. He raised his glass. "To the Project!"
We all drank to that.
"Of course," Drury said, "not everybody at New Chicago U is a Project
enthusiast-"
"I'd have thought they would be," I said.
"Well, some think we don't understand Mars yet. They want to study it the way
it is. They have a point; there's a lot to learn, a lot we can learn about
Earth by studying Mars. We'll lose most of that information when the
atmosphere begins to build up."
"How long do they want to wait?" Erica asked.
Drury shrugged. "They don't say. But have you ever heard of a research project
being finished?"
We laughed at that. I had two glasses of wine, then switched to coffee. "I
still won't feel right until that damn thing's set off and we see the gusher,"
I said.
The party broke up about eleven. Drury went to his quarters and I got a nap. I
relieved Doug about
2:00 A. M.
"One day and night after this," I said. "Get some sleep. I'll catch Plemmons
for the next watch."
"Right."
I made sure the inner door of the air-lock was open. I was wearing my suit,
and had my helmet beside me. With that air-lock door open nobody could get in
without blowing out the blockhouse, and we could still trigger the bomb. It
would go of early and spoil the Skipper's big speech, but it would still show
Earth we knew how to make nukes - and show Mars that we were serious about the
Project, too.
The Project was the big thing with the labor clients. All our agents told us
that. With the Project under way there was hope for anybody. A lot of
workers would probably choose to stay with the big companies. We were
telling Mars' industries that if they didn't help the Federation against us,
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