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His head was clearing up more now. He realized that he had been talking a little wildly at first. Or was he really insane? Had he been insane from the beginning? No. He knew with absolute clarity that every step he had made had been cold, calculating, and ruthless, but utterly and absolutely sane. He suddenly wished that he had shot Tallis without wakening him.
Since VanDeusen was the senior officer at the table, the others listened respectfully as he talked, only inserting a word now and then to show that they were listening. MacMaine was thinking deeply about something else entirely, but VanDeusen's influence intruded a little. MacMaine was wondering what it was that bothered him about General Tallis, the Kerothi prisoner.
The hazan opened the Pentateuch and the parnas of the congregation was called to the Torah. Every movement was anticipated by the priest. The parnas reverently lifted the fringes of his tallis, and with them touched the sacred Scroll; then, kissing them, he recited the customary blessing. Mikail repeated it with him. It sounded almost as familiar as his own liturgy.
"This is a chance I have to take," MacMaine said evenly. "With this gun, you can shoot me down right here and try to escape alone. I've told you every detail of our course of action, and, with luck, you might make it alone." He held out his hand, with the weapon resting on his open palm. General Tallis eyed the Earthman for a long second.
MacMaine could accept the reason for that attitude; the general's background was different from that of an Earthman, and therefore he could not be judged by Terrestrial standards. Besides, MacMaine could acknowledge to himself that Tallis was superior to the norm not only the norm of Keroth, but that of Earth.
In the dark morning two horses come galloping back, frightened and streaming with sweat. A search party goes out, finds the coach upset by the Four Holed Cross, the jeweller lying beside it with a couple of pistol bullets in him, and the money, the diamond, and Roger Tallis nowhere. So much for the murdered man.
MacMaine went up the ramp with the captain scrambling up behind him. Tallis was just stepping into the commander's cabin as the two men entered the air lock. MacMaine didn't see him again until the ship was twelve minutes on her way nearly five billion miles from Earth and still accelerating. He identified himself at the door and Tallis opened it cautiously.
Even General Hokotan, the Headquarters Staff man, who had been transferred temporarily to the Fleet Force to keep an eye on both MacMaine and Tallis, was enthusiastically pounding MacMaine's shoulder. No one aboard was supposed to know that Hokotan was a Headquarters officer, but MacMaine had spotted the spy rather easily.
Tallis shook his head. "You sent no message, Sepastian. You were watched. You know that. You could not have sent a message." "You saw me send it," MacMaine said. "So did everyone else in the fleet. Hokotan helped me send it made all the arrangements at my orders. But because you do not understand the workings of the Earthman's mind, you didn't even recognize it as a message.
He had done his best, and now, after nearly a year of captivity, Tallis had come to tell him that his offer had been accepted. General Tallis sat across from Colonel MacMaine, smoking his cigarette absently. "Just why are they accepting my proposition?" MacMaine asked bluntly. "Because they can afford to," Tallis said with a smile. "You will be watched, my sibling-by-choice.
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