"Well?" Sherikov demanded. "You know what I want. I want you to wire this damn thing up." Sherikov came close to Cole, his big face hard. "You can do it, I think. I could tell by the way you held it--and the job you did on the children's toy, of course. You could wire it up right, and in five days. Nobody else can. And if it's not wired up Centaurus will keep on running the galaxy and Terra will have to sweat it out here in the Sol system. One tiny mediocre sun, one dust mote out of a whole galaxy." Cole did not answer. Sherikov became impatient. "Well? What do you say?" "What happens if I don't wire this control for you? I mean, what happens to _me_?" "Then I turn you over to Reinhart. Reinhart will kill you instantly. He thinks you're dead, killed when the Albertine Range was annihilated. If he had any idea I had saved you--" "I see." "I brought you down here for one thing. If you wire it up I'll have you sent back to your own time continuum. If you don't--" Cole considered, his face dark and brooding. "What do you have to lose? You'd already be dead, if we hadn't pulled you out of those hills." "Can you really return me to my own time?" "Of course!" "Reinhart won't interfere?" Sherikov laughed. "What can he do? How can he stop me? I have my own men. You saw them. They landed all around you. You'll be returned." "Yes. I saw your men." "Then you agree?" "I agree," Thomas Cole said. "I'll wire it for you. I'll complete the control turret--within the next five days." IV Three days later Joseph Dixon slid a closed-circuit message plate across the desk to his boss. "Here. You might be interested in this." Reinhart picked the plate up slowly. "What is it? You came all the way here to show me this?" "That's right." "Why didn't you vidscreen it?" Dixon smiled grimly. "You'll understand when you decode it. It's from Proxima Centaurus." "Centaurus!" "Our counter-intelligence service. They sent it direct to me. Here, I'll decode it for you. Save you the trouble." Dixon came around behind Reinhart's desk. He leaned over the Commissioner's shoulder, taking hold of the plate and breaking the seal with his thumb nail. "Hang on," Dixon said. "This is going to hit you hard. According to our agents on Armun, the Centauran High Council has called an emergency session to deal with the problem of Terra's impending attack. Centauran relay couriers have reported to the High Council that the Terran bomb Icarus is virtually complete. Work on the bomb has been rushed through final stages in the underground laboratories under the Ural Range, directed by the Terran physicist Peter Sherikov." "So I understand from Sherikov himself. Are you surprised the Centaurans know about the bomb? They have spies swarming over Terra. That's no news."