Demon

He was now sure he would lose, in the long run. It was all very well to be set up as Adam's conscience, but television had always had a louder voice than a child's conscience-which didn't even exist until someone nurtured it. Chris wasn't being given a chance.

A year had gone by. Cirocco had said it might be as long as two years before she came again.

He was pretty sure it would be too late by then.

It would have cheered him considerably to know Cirocco and her army were already on the march to Hyperion. But Gaea had not seen fit to tell him, and he had no other way of knowing. He might have gotten a clue from Gaean television. Adam was asleep, and Chris was sitting slumped in front of a set. The movie was the 1995 version of Napoleon, un-altered, and on the screen vast armies marched toward Waterloo.

But by then Chris was too drunk to notice.

FIVE

The second day's march saw even more soldiers pass out than on the previous trek, though this one was shorter.

Cirocco had expected that, too. It probably looked like an easy discharge. She told her medics to examine everyone carefully and send back only the most serious cases. Those turned out to be sixteen in number. Everyone else shouldered packs when camp was broken and marched on into Iapetus.

They crossed the two small, nameless rivers that flowed south from the Tyche Mountains into the great sea of Pontus that dominated Iapetus. The bridges were in good repair. The terrain was easy. Iapetus, an enemy of Gaea, would not hinder their progress through his domain, Cirocco knew. Their problems would begin in Cronus.

For several "days" the army camped by the lovely sea. The weather held clear and warm. Cirocco gradually picked up the pace as the soldiers grew more accustomed to the rhythm of the march. But she did not push it too hard. She wanted them tough, not exhausted, when they reached the hard parts.

At the confluence of Pluto and Ophion, very near the border of Cronus, Cirocco had her Generals pick the garrison of her extreme eastern line of defense. This time she did not go for the weak ones. She wanted veterans, the toughest men and women she could find. They would set up a fort just west of the Pluto ford, and north of Ophion. She left them Titanide canoes for crossing the big river. They were to patrol north and south, traveling light and fast. Their position was not defensible against a determined attack, but that was not the point. It was her hope that, if attacked, the troops could send messengers back to Bellinzona and fight a delaying, guerilla action, giving the city as much time as possible to prepare for the assault.

All this depressed her. Almost everything she had done in Iapetus was preparation for defeat. If the Bellinzona Air Force still existed, this outpost of its swift messengers would be superfluous. Even the slowest Dragonfly could get to Bellinzona from here in twenty minutes and sound the alarm.

But the Air Force might not make it through Cronus.

And of course, if her army was victorious in the coming fight, no one would be returning from Hyperion but her own soldiers and the refugees and prisoners of war from Pandemonium.

But she owed the city every precaution she could think of. She had co

She knew that, if it came to it, these troops would fight.

The Circum-Gaea had crossed the Ophion at a point just within the invisible boundary between Iapetus and Cronus.

Back when Gaby was building the Highway, Ophion crossings were her biggest challenges. The river was very broad and fairly deep in the flatlands, and in those places where it ran swift, it did so through unforgiving mountains. So she had kept the crossings to a minimum.

But some had been necessary. Cronus was a good example. There was no really easy way through Cronus, but the northern route was five times as hard as the southern. So a big bridge had been necessary.

Cirocco's engineers, who had scouted the route as far as Mnemosyne and done what repairs were feasible to the roadway and bridges in Iapetus and, to a lesser extent, in Cronus, had reported that the Ophion Bridge was hopeless. The entire south end had collapsed. It had taken Gaby's crews five years to build it, almost seventy years ago. There was no way it could be repaired in time for the march to Pandemonium.

So they encamped on the northern shore and hundreds of rafts were built. This was hard and slow work, as that part of Cronus had few trees large enough to provide the lumber.

Cirocco and the Generals sca

She had explained her reasoning to Conal, his pilots, and the Generals shortly before the begi

"That puts Hyperion, our destination, here, at two o'clock," she had said, writing in the name. "The central Hyperion cable is the base for the Second Fighter/Bomber Wing of the Gaean Air Force. Next door, at three, is Oceanus. There is no Third wing; Gaea has no control in Oceanus." She put a large X by the name of Oceanus.

"The Fourth, based in Mnemosyne, was wiped out by an explosion just over a year ago. My sources tell me it has not been replaced." She made another X. "The Sixth, from Iapetus, attacked Bellinzona and was wiped out. There is no Seventh, in Dione, for the same reasons that apply to Oceanus. The next viable unit is the Eighth, here in Metis." She made the two more Fs, and stepped back to admire her work.

"You can see that Cronus exists in the middle of a large gap in Gaea's air power. From Metis, here at eight o'clock, all the way around to Hyperion, at two, there are seven fully armed bomber wings. Metis is being watched closely. If an attack originates from there, we'll get some warning over the radio. The same with Hyperion. But if the Fifth drops down on us while we're in Cronus, we'll have very little warning.

"I've worked out a couple possible scenarios. Say the Metis Eighth starts its attack. It takes them some time to get here, and we get some warning. The more logical thing for Gaea to do, I would think, is to begin with the Cronus wing to surprise us and pin us down. At the same time, the Eighth or the Second, or both, take off and get here in time to relieve the Fifth.

"The second option is to let us go right through Cronus. Frankly, I'd rather be attacked here. Because if Gaea waits until we get to Hyperion, she can bring in all these groups-Phoebe, Crius, Rhea, Hyperion, Cronus ... maybe even Tethys, pretty much simultaneously and with little or no warning."

Everyone had studied Cirocco's big Gaean clock solemnly. Ideas had been advanced, some of them useful. The consensus was that the smart thing for Gaea to do was wait until they were in Hyperion and bring her full strength to bear.

Cirocco agreed ... and thought glumly that Gaea would probably do just the opposite. All logic aside, Cirocco dreaded an attack in the hostile night of Cronus.

SIX

The Luftmorder in Tethys did not know he was the flugelführer of the Tenth Fighter/Bomber Wing of the Gaean Air Force. It was not a designation given to him by Gaea. He only knew he was the leader of the squadron. He had a vague awareness there were other squadrons, but it was of no importance to him. His mission was well-defined-and he didn't work well with other Luftmorders. It was not in his nature to do so. He was the flugelführer.