"The most significant factor, perhaps, is that Broghuilio and the Jevlenese have not arrived here yet," Shilohin offered. After two years of being stationed on Jevlen as planetary administrators on behalf of the Thuriens, the Shapieron Ganymeans had no doubt who had been the cause of the deterioration to all-out war that had followed. "It will be four years before Broghuilio overthrows this Freskel-Gar and proclaims himself dictator. A lot can happen in four years."

Monchar, Garuth's second-in-command on the ship, endorsed the point. "The assassinations would be enough on their own to send things into decline, even without Broghuilio. Especially if each side suspected the other. Preventing them from happening could be the single most important result we could achieve. Failing to do so could make everything else futile."

Showm took a long breath while she composed her words. Then she looked back up at the screen showing Freskel-Gar. "How we know the things that we know is a long and complex story that is better told at a more fitting time. The fact of our appearance should be enough to give ample weight to our words. The aircraft that has just departed from Melthis carrying your two heads of state is in imminent danger of being destroyed. I don't wish to harp over details. There may not be time. But it is imperative that you issue orders immediately for the flight to be rerouted to the nearest safe landing facility until the circumstances are investigated. Then, there are events shortly to befall your world that will have calamitous consequences for all of Minerva if they are not averted. After those things are dealt with, we can talk about the uniqueness of the occasion and the development of relationships between our races."

All eyes around the Command Deck were fixed on the main screen. Freskel-Gar's features knotted as he took in the strange mixed company of vanished aliens and unfamiliar humans. They could almost read his thoughts. Appearing from nowhere and claiming to know our future? And then, again, But beings whose civilization was advanced before we even existed, and a craft that travels from the stars?

"How can you know such things?" he demanded.

Showm emitted a sigh that conveyed impatience being controlled only with difficulty. "I have already said, there isn't time now. All will be explained in due course. For now, just do as we ask. Call down the flight."

Freskel-Gar stared uncertainly for a few seconds longer. Then, seeming to make his mind up, he turned and conferred with the others who were with him. They murmured and gesticulated among themselves for what seemed ages. Hunt caught Danchekker's gaze and just raised his eyebrows. Chien watched impassively. There was nothing for any of them to say.

The deliberations on the screen ended finally, with nods and a couple of people hurrying away. Freskel-Gar advanced the forefront again. "Very well," he said. "Instructions are being issued in accordance with your wishes. We are calling the flight controllers now, and making alternative arrangements for landing." The sighs of relief aboard the Shapieron were audible. Frenua Showm had to put out a hand to steady herself. "And now, perhaps we can give consideration to hearing the rest of what you have to tell us in more propitious surroundings befitting to the circumstances," Freskel-Gar suggested. "It shall be our honor to receive you here, personally, as guests of Minerva. We await your account with considerable impatience and limitless fascination."

Silence endured for a while in the communications room at the Agracon after the screen showing the transmission relayed from tracking stations had cut out. Troops of the Prince's Own Regiment who had secured the building stood at their posts by the doors. Perasmon's staff had all been removed. Freskel-Gar's people manned the consoles and monitor panels.

"Are we done?" the communications major who had taken temporary charge checked.

"Link down. We're off the air," a technician confirmed. Freskel-Gar relaxed and looked inquiringly toward the screen showing Broghuilio and his staff on the bridge of the Jevlenese ship on lunar Farside.

"Splendid!" Broghuilio acknowledged. "An impressive performance, Your Highness. I could almost have believed it too. But I do you a disservice; it is 'Your Majesty' now… Or very soon to be, anyway."

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Freskel-Gar advised that the aircraft carrying the two national leaders was on its way to a safe landing ground, and he had received a message of compliments and respects from them to pass on to the Shapieron. They would receive a deputation from the ship jointly, possibly in Cerios, as soon as their own revised itinerary was put in order. In the meantime, a preparatory meeting at Melthis would facilitate arrangements greatly, and the landing there should proceed as he had suggested. It was neither Calazar's nor Caldwell's style to insist on being involved in every stage of every decision. The strategy for the mission had been set, and it was up to the people on the spot to determine the best way of implementing it. Frenua Showm sent a report to Control at Thurien via the primary beacon on the latest happenings, and turned her attention to preparing for the meeting with Freskel-Gar.

They made the descent in one of the Shapieron's general utility shuttles-a craft larger than the reconnaissance probe that had rescued Jissek, but smaller than a surface lander, which would have been too large for the helipad area inside the Agracon complex, where the Lambians had directed them. Eesyan and Showm were the principal Thuriens, accompanied by a small staff; Hunt and Danchekker represented Earth; Monchar and two of the ship's officers went too, on behalf of Garuth. The Shapieron moved closer in to launch the shuttle but remained within the Moon's cone of visual eclipse from Minerva. It seemed fitting to let the planet's governments announce the vessel's presence to the population in their own time, rather than have it revealed prematurely by an outbreak of pandemonium among the astronomical community.

Hunt was quiet as he sat in the cabin of the shuttle, watching the orb of Minerva enlarging on one screen, while the Moon, which they had passed close by, slowly shrank on another. His mind went back five years to the discovery of "Charlie"-the spacesuited corpse on the Moon that had been the first trace of the Lunarians to come to light. The subsequent investigation, orchestrated mainly by Gregg Caldwell while the rest of the UNSA chiefs were trying to draw lines between who should do what, was what had first brought Hunt and Danchekker together. One of their first major achievements had been the reconstruction of Charlie's world from information contained in documents found on his person and other evidence that had shown up later. That was when they had christened it Minerva. Hunt's group had built a six-foot-diameter model of it in his laboratory at Houston, from where the UNSA investigations had been coordinated. He remembered spending long hours gazing at that model, trying to bring to life in his mind the picture of a lost world that had existed fifty thousand years ago. He had gotten to know every island and coastal outline, the mountain ranges and the equatorial forests, the inhabited areas and major cities sandwiched between the advancing ice sheets. What he was seeing on the screen now looked entirely familiar. But this wasn't a model in a lab or a computer's reconstruction. It was real, and it was out there. They were on their way down to its surface.

The Moon, on the other hand, presented an unfamiliar countenance-one that was smoother and with less features than the pictures he had known from science books and encyclopedias since childhood. The Moon that looked down on the unfolding saga of human history, the emergence of its various races, the struggles of their earliest ancestors to survive, had carried the scars of the ferocious battle fought across its surface in the final days of the war before it was obliterated by billions of tons of debris when Minerva broke up. But those events were twenty years in the future yet. The Moon that attended Minerva was still unsullied and serene.