"I don’t understand why you have specified two days," JEVEX answered.

Broghuilio shook his head, nonplussed. "It’s obvious, isn’t it? The Terran attack will begin two days from now, will it not?"

"I don’t follow, Excellency."

Broghuilio sent a puzzled frown around the room. His aides stared back at him equally bemused. "The attack is due in two days, is it not?" he said again.

"There has been no postponement, Excellency. The attack is still expected today, twelve hours from now."

Nothing happened for a few seconds.

Then Broghuilio brought his hand up to his face and beat it slowly and deliberately several times against his brow. "JEVEX," he said. His voice was quiet as his effort to control himself over-compensated. "You have just told us that the first wave is only now in the process of leaving Earth."

"Pardon, Excellency, but I have no record of saying any such thing."

It was too much. Broghuilio’s voice began to rise and shake uncontrollably. "How can the Terrans be less than a day away?" he demanded. "Are they or are they not departing from Earth now?"

"They began departing from Earth two days ago," JEVEX replied. "They have entered Jevlenese planetary space and will commence their attack in twelve hours’ time."

Broghuilio’s color was deepening rapidly. "Those surveillance reports that you just presented. Were they or were they not live from Earth as of this moment, as you stated?"

"They were records obtained two days ago, as I stated."

"YOU DID NOT SAY THAT!" Broghuilio screamed.

"I did. My records confirm it. Shall I replay them?"

Broghuilio turned to appeal to the rest of the room. "You all heard it. What did that idiot machine say? Were those views live or were they not?" Nobody was listening. One of the aides was rushing back and forth and jabbering incoherently, another was clutching at his face and moaning, while among the rest consternation was breaking out on every side.

"They couldn’t be from two days ago."

"How do you know? How do you know what’s happening and what isn’t? How do you know anything?"

"JEVEX said so."

"It said the opposite too."

"Maybe JEVEX is mad."

"But JEVEX said-"

"JEVEX doesn’t know what it’s saying. We can’t trust anything."

"The Terrans are coming! They’re only hours away!"

On one side of the room the scientist, Estordu, quietly vanished. In the confusion, nobody noticed.

Broghuilio was waving his arms and shouting above the clamor. "Twelve hours! Twelve hours! And you tell me you have no weapons! They’ll be coming straight in for the kill because they don’t know what opposition to expect. . . . . AND WE HAVE NO OPPOSITION TO OFFER! A shipful of children could walk in and take us over, and the Terrans don’t even know it. And what do I have to stop them? Imbecile generals, imbecile scientists, and an imbecile computer!"

Wylott shouldered his way through to where Broghuilio was standing. "There is no choice," he insisted. "You have to accept Verikoff’s terms. At least that way there will come another day." Broghuilio turned his head and glowered, but the inevitability of what Wylott had said was written in his eyes. But still he could not bring himself to give the order. Wylott waited for a few seconds, then raised his head to call above the commotion still going on around them. "JEVEX. Call Earth via your own channel to Sverenssen. Get Verikoff on the line."

"At once, General," JEVEX acknowledged.

In the communications room in Connecticut, Hunt turned his head toward Verikoff, who was watching from the doorway. "You’d better come on in. It looks as if you’ll be on again in a few seconds to accept the surrender. It’s just about all over." Verikoff moved to the center of the room while the others fell back to clear a small circle around him. On the screen showing the Jevlenese War Room, Wylott and Broghuilio had turned to look directly out at the room and were waiting expectantly for JEVEX to make the connection. Verikoff folded his arms and assumed a domineering posture in readiness.

And suddenly the screen went blank.

Puzzled looks appeared all around the room. "VISAR?" Hunt said after a few seconds. "VISAR, what’s happened?" There was no reply. The screens that had been connecting them to Thurien and the Shapieron had gone blank as well.

Verikoff moved quickly over to a bank of equipment on one side of the room and ran rapidly through a sequence of tests. "It’s dead," he announced, looking up at the others. "The whole system is dead. We don’t have any channels to anywhere, and I can’t open any. Something has cut us off from JEVEX completely."

In the Government Center at Thurios, Caldwell was equally bewildered. "VISAR, what’s happened?" he demanded. "Where did the views from Earth and Jevlen go? Have you lost them or something?"

A few seconds went by, then VISAR answered. "It’s worse than that. I haven’t only lost Connecticut and the War Room, I’ve lost everything from JEVEX. I don’t have anything into it at all. The whole system has switched off."

"Don’t you know anything that’s happening at Jevlen at all?" Morizal asked, aghast.

"Nothing," VISAR said. "The only channel I’ve got to anywhere in the whole of the JEVEX-controlled world-system is the one through to the Shapieron . JEVEX seems to be dead. The whole system has just gone down."

Broghuilio found himself reclining in his private quarters deep underground in the complex that housed the Directorate of Strategic Planning. He sat up sharply, unsure of what had happened. A moment before he had been in the War Room with Wylott, waiting for a connection to Verikoff. Even as he remembered, he saw again in his mind’s eye the armada from Earth, at that moment sweeping inward toward Jevlen. He looked around wildly.

"JEVEX?"

No response.

"JEVEX, answer me."

Nothing.

Something cold and heavy turned over deep in his stomach. He leaped to his feet, fumbled his way into a robe to cover his shorts and undershirt, and hurried into the next room to check the status indicators of the suite’s monitor panel. Lighting, air conditioning, communications, services . . . everything had reverted to emergency backup mode. JEVEX was not operating. He tried activating the communications console, but the only thing he could raise on the screen was a message stating that all channels were saturated. It meant that the condition was general and not due simply to some local failure; the complex was in panic. He rushed through into his bedroom and began frantically tearing clothes out of a closet.

He was still buttoning his tunic when a tone sounded from the outside door in the hallway. Broghuilio hastened out and pressed his thumb against a printlock plate to dematerialize the door. Estordu was there with two other aides. The sounds of shouting and commotion came in from behind them.

"What’s happened?" Broghuilio demanded. "The whole system is dead."

"I deactivated it," Estordu told him. "I threw the manual override breakers in the master nucleus control room. I’ve shut JEVEX down totally."

Broghuilio’s beard quivered, and his eyes widened. "You what-" he began, but Estordu waved a hand impatiently to silence him. The gesture was so out of character that Broghuilio just stared.

"Can’t you see what’s happened?" Estordu said, speaking rapidly and urgently. "JEVEX was not functioning coherently. Something was affecting it from the inside. It could only have been VISAR. Somehow VISAR gained access to it. That meant that the Thuriens could have been watching every move we made. We still have twelve hours, and if we move quickly we can still get away. We still have emergency communications channels to Uttan, and the standby transfer system can project an entry port to Jevlen. With JEVEX inoperative and VISAR therefore blind, we can make our arrangements without risking interference from the Thuriens or the Terrans. The nearest Terran ships are still twelve hours away. By the time they get here we can be gone, and they’ll have no way of knowing where to. By the time they think of looking for us at Uttan, we will be well prepared. Don’t you see? It was the only way. With JEVEX running we couldn’t have planned a move without them knowing."