Страница 16 из 38
Pyotr's voice was as muscular as his body. He said, "I know who you are, or who you claim to be. Let's hear your story."
Broward, as nominal superior, felt he should talk. He did so without holding anything back because he expected that Pyotr would, sooner or later, find out the truth. He did not look like a man who would tolerate being lied to.
After listening to Broward's story, frequently interrupted by questions from him, Pyotr was silent for a while. Then, he said, "If I keep you here, Scone may send out another party. He wants the bomb pretty badly, and I can see why. And if we keep the second expedition, then... ?"
"He'll come in full force," said Broward. The bomb is his only chance of defeating the Axe."
"We can't fight him," said Pyotr. "If we sealed up the tower, he'd just blast his way in, drown us, no matter how many of his own he lost in the process. Am I right?"
"Right."
"On the other hand, if I were to destroy the bomb, he'd have no reason to bother with us. Right?"
"Wrong. If you did that, you'd be his enemy. He'd just drop a hydrogen bomb by the tower. You can't defend yourself."
"Mars is as much a threat to us as the Moon," said Pyotr. "They don't know about us now, but if they attack the Moon, which they may be doing at this moment, and crush the Moon forces... well, if anything is left of the bases, the Axe might find references to us in the files."
"I doubt that Scone has recorded this expedition," said Broward.
"And the Axe must not have heard about us, otherwise, we'd have heard from them long ago. They'd know as well as Scone what the bomb means."
Pyotr paused and made a steeple of his huge brown hands and rolled his eyes upward as if in prayer. Broward wondered how Pyotr would handle this. No matter which way he moved, he would be in a very bad situation. That is, unless he had some place else on Earth to hide.
Abruptly, Pyotr said to the guards, 'Take them away." They were led back into the huge center room, across, and down another ru
Broward paced back and forth like a tiger in a narrow cage. "I wonder if Man's worth saving," he said. "He almost succeeds in a
"If he survives, then he's worth it," said Moshe. "If he dies, then he's not worth it; he proved it by becoming extinct. Why worry about something abstract like that? Let's consider how we're going to get out of this."
"All right. Let's think about Pyotr. What can he do? He could detour Scone. Go to the Russians or the Chinese. But what kind of a deal could he make with them? None that would be any better than a deal with Scone, He couldn't trust them. No, the only thing for him to do is to leave his once-safe snug little nest and hide elsewhere. But where could that be?"
He stopped talking; the door had swung open. A young woman carrying a tray of food entered. Behind her were two men with guns. She was a tall well-built woman with wide shoulders, beautiful but rather strong features, green eyes, and auburn hair. She set the tray down on the lower bunk and said, "Eat, citizens, while I question you about certain matters."
Broward looked at the emblem on her uniform and said, "Psychological warfare?"
Before she could reply, Moshe said something to her in a foreign tongue which Broward identified as Hebrew, although he was not familiar enough with the language to understand it.
She looked startled, then replied swiftly in the same tongue.
The two guards looked uneasy. One said, "What are you doing, Katashkina?"
She answered in Russian, "He thinks I look like a girl he used to know. An Israeli."
The guard exploded with laughter, then said, "You, a Jew?"
The other guard said, dourly, "How do you happen to be able to talk Hebrew? That was Hebrew, wasn't it?"
"I know many languages," she said.
Moshe spoke again in Hebrew, and she answered briefly. Thereafter, the conversation was in Russian or English, but Broward detected that Moshe was elated. She asked them questions about their life on the Moon and events since the war. Several times, she required that they identify Moon perso
"What are you trying to do?" Broward said. "Establish that we are not Axe spies? If we'd been Axe, all we would have had to do to dispose of you was to drop a bomb on the tower."
She did not reply to him but instead continued her line of interrogation. Finally, she picked up the tray and started to walk out. At the door, she paused a second and said a few words to Moshe, again in Hebrew. Then, the door was closed.
Broward did not ask Moshe to translate his words with the woman. He knew that, if the cell was bugged, and it probably was, the monitor had asked for somebody in Pyotr's group, other than the woman, who knew Hebrew.
Moshe, guessing what Broward was thinking, put his hand on Broward's wrist, and he tapped out in code what he did not dare to say aloud.
"I was right I knew her. She was the child of very good friends of my parents when we lived in Ugolyak. I always suspected them of being Jewish, and I knew that if her parents had attempted to educate her as mine had tried to educate me, then she'd know Hebrew."
"So?" Broward tapped back.
"So... I was right So, I'm not the only Hebrew left alive in the world."
"She doesn't have to be..."
"No, she doesn't But I gave her the opening phrases of Hatikvah, the national anthem of Israel. It's long been a criminal offense to sing it, so if she knew it... well, she replied with the the second line."
Moshe sang softly, " 'Kolod balevav penimah,' I said. And she answered, 'Nefesh yehudi, homiyah.' Translated, 'Oh while within a Jewish breast beats true a Jewish heart'"
"I still don't see..."
"But you'll see."
'But when they translate what you two said, she'll be in trouble. If you're pla
"She's no dummy. Remember, she has a perfectly good excuse for talking to me in Hebrew. And I didn't ask her openly to help me. Just made some pleasantries, complimented her on her good looks. I didn't even remind her that we once knew each other. But she knows."
"Just what are you banking on?" '
"That she'll think I'm a Jew and will help me."
"Are you or aren't you?"
Moshe shrugged and smiled. Then, he tapped, "I never wanted to be. But everybody insists that I am. Can the whole world be wrong?"
Pyotr said, "You presented a great problem. But Lieutenant Katashkina has suggested a plan with high probabilities of succeeding. Unfortunately, it involves your deaths and those of all on the Moon. I would rather not do this, but I have no alternative."
Pyotr looked at them intently as if expecting a violent reaction, but the two, frozen-faced, merely stared back. Pyotr smiled and then said. "There's no need my informing you what we're going to do, since your cooperation will be complete but involuntary. However, the lieutenant's plan is such a clever one that I can't resist telling it to you. It'll give you something to think about on the way back."