Bandeau looked as though he were going to explode, but a glance from the President silenced him. "Go on, Mike," he said to the senator. "Mr. President, I know it looks bad. It's going to look even worse for a while. But, let me ask you one question. How is the Ch'ien space drive coming along?" "Why ... fine. It checked out months ago. The new ship is on her shakedown cruise now. You know that." "Right. Now, ask yourself one more question: What is the purpose of Moonbase One?" "Why, to--" The telephone rang. The President scooped it up with one hand. "Yes?" Then he listened for a long minute, his expression changing slowly. "Yes," he said at last. "Yes, I got it. No; I'll release it to the newsmen. All right. Fine." He hung up. "Twelve minutes ago," he said slowly, "the old _Lunik IX_ smashed into Moonbase One and blew it to smithereens. The Soviets say that a meteor hit _Lunik IX_ at just the right angle to slow it down enough to make it hit the base. They send their condolences." * * * * * Brian Taggert lay back on the couch in his office and folded his hands complacently on his abdomen. "So Donna's theory held water and so did mine. The accident was due to human intervention. Forsythe saw something from space hitting Moonbase One and assumed it was a meteor. He never dreamed the Soviets would drop old _Lunik IX_ on it." Senator Kerotski carefully lit a cigar. "There's going to be an awful lot of fuss in the papers, but the President is going to announce that he accepts the Soviet story. I convinced him that it is best to let the Soviets think they're a long way ahead of us in the space race now. There's nothing like a little complacency to slow someone down." "How'd you convince him?" "Asked the same question you asked me. Now that we have the Ch'ien space drive, what purpose does a moon base serve? None at all, of course." Donna Tadesco leaned forward in her chair. "Did you happen to notice the sequence of events, senator? We were warned that the base would be struck. We decided to abandon it. We organized the biggest space lift in history to evacuate the men and the most valuable instruments. But the Soviets thought we were sending equipment _up_ instead of bringing it _down_. They didn't know what we were up to, but they decided to put a stop to it, so they dropped an abandoned space satellite on it. "If we hadn't decided to evacuate the base, it would never have happened. "_That_ is human intervention with a vengeance. We still don't know whether or not Forsythe's predictions will ever do us any good or not. Every time we've taken steps to avoid one of his prophesied catastrophes, we've done the very thing that brought them about." The senator puffed his cigar in thoughtful silence. "We'll just have to keep working with him," Taggert said. "Maybe we'll eventually make sense out of this precognition thing.