"I don't know. I wouldn't be surprised."
Biron turned to the control board. There were still dozens of contacts he had not determined the slightest use for. Well, later!
He turned to Gillbret again. "And the ship took you home?"
"No, it didn't. When that meteor wove its pattern through the control room, it didn't leave the board untouched. It would have been most amazing if it had. Dials were smashed, the casing battered and dented. There was no way of telling how the previous set of the controls had been altered, but it must have been somehow, because it never took me back to Rhodia.
"Eventually, of course, it began deceleration, and I knew the trip was theoretically over. I couldn't tell where I was, but I managed to maneuver the visiplate so that I could tell there was a planet close enough to show a disk in the ship telescope. It was blind luck, because the disk was increasing in size. The ship was heading for the planet.
"Oh, not directly. That would have been too impossible to hope for. If I had just drifted, the ship would have missed the planet by a million miles, at least, but at that distance I could use ordinary etheric radio. I knew how to do that. It was after this was allover that I began educating myself in electronics. I made up my mind that I would never be quite so helpless again. Being helpless is one of the things that isn't altogether amusing."
Biron prompted, "So you used the radio."
Gillbret went on: "Exactly, and they came and got me;"
"Who?"
"The men of the planet. It was inhabited."
"Well, the luck piles up. What planet was it?"
"I don't know."
"You mean they didn't tell you?"
"Amusing, isn't it? They didn't. But it was somewhere among the Nebular Kingdoms!"
"How did you know that?"
"Because they knew the ship I was in was a Tyrannian vessel. They knew that by sight, and almost blasted it before I could convince them I was the only one on board alive."
Biron put his large hands on his knees and kneaded them. "Now hold on and pull back. I don't get this. If they knew it was a Tyrannian vessel and intending blasting it, isn't that the best proof that the world was not in the Nebular Kingdoms? that it was anywhere but there?"
"No, by the Galaxy." Gillbret's eyes were shining, and his voice climbed in enthusiasm. "It was in the Kingdoms. They took me to the surface, and what a world it was! There were men there from allover the Kingdoms. I could tell by the accents. And they had no fear of the Tyranni. The place was an arsenal. You couldn't tell from space. It might have been a rundown farming world, but the life of the planet was underground. Somewhere in the Kingdoms, my boy, somewhere there is that planet still, and it is not afraid of the Tyranni, and it is going to destroy the Tyranni as it would have destroyed the ship I was on then, if the crewmen had been still alive."
Biron felt his heart bound. For a moment he wanted to believe.
After all, maybe. Maybe!
11. And Maybe Not!
And then again, maybe not!
Biron said, "How did you learn all this about its being an arsenal? How long did you stay? What did you see?"
Gillbret grew impatient. "It wasn't exactly what I saw at all. They didn't conduct me on any tours, or anything like that." He forced himself to relax. "Well, look, this is what happened. By the time they got me off the ship, I was in more or less of a bad state. I had been too frightened to eat much-it's a terrible thing, being marooned in space -and I must have looked worse than I really was.
"I identified myself, more or less, and they took me underground. With the ship, of course. I suppose they were more interested in the ship than in myself. It gave them a chance to study Tyrannian spatio-engineering. They took me to what must have been a hospital."
"But what did you see, Uncle?" asked Artemisia.
Biron interrupted, "Hasn't he ever told you this before?"
Artemisia said, "No."
And Gillbret added, "I've never told anyone till now. I was taken to a hospital, as I said. I passed research laboratories in that hospital that must have been better than anything we have on Rhodia. On the way to the hospital I passed factories in which some sort of metalwork was going on. The ships that had captured me were certainly like none I've ever heard about.
"It was all so apparent to me at the time that I have never questioned it in the years since. I think of it as my 'rebellion world,' and I know that someday swarms of ships will leave it to attack the Tyranni, and that the subject worlds will be called upon to rally round the rebel leaders. From year to year I've waited for it to happen. Each new year I've thought to myself: This may be the one. And, each time, I half hoped it wouldn't be, because I was longing to get away first, to join them so that I might be part of the great attack. I didn't want them to start without me."
He laughed shakily. "I suppose it would have amused most people to know what was going on in my mind. In my mind. Nobody thought much of me, you know."
Biron said, "All this happened over twenty years ago, and they haven't attacked? There's been no sign of them? No strange ships have been reported? No incidents? And you still think-"
Gillbret fired at him, "Yes, I do. Twenty years isn't too long to organize a rebellion against a planet that rules fifty systems. I was there just at the beginning of the rebellion. I know that too. Slowly, since then, they must have been honeycombing the planet with their underground preparations, developing newer ships and weapons, training more men, organizing the attack.
"It's only in the video thrillers that men spring to arms at a moment's notice; that a new weapon is needed one day, invented the next, mass-produced the third, and used the fourth. These things take time, Biron, and the men of the rebellion world must know they will have to be completely ready before beginning. They won't be able to strike twice.