Shandor stared for a long moment, shaking his head like a man seeing a phantom. When he found words, his voice was choked, the words wrenched out as if by force. "You're—you're alive."
"Yes. I'm alive."
"Then—" Shandor shook his head violently, turning to the window, and back to the small, white-haired man. "Then your death was just a fake."
The old man nodded tiredly. "That's right. Just a fake."
Shandor stumbled to a chair, sat down woodenly. "I don't get it," he said dully. "I just don't get it. The war—that—that I can see. I can see how you worked it, how you engineered it, but this—" he gestured feebly at the window, at the black, impossible landscape outside. "This I can't see. They're bombing us to pieces, they're bombing out Washington, probably your own home, your own family—last night—" he stopped, frowning in confusion—"no, it couldn't have been last night—two days ago?—well, whatever day it was, they were bombing us to pieces, and you're up here—why? What's it going to get you? This war, this whole rotten intrigue mess, and then this?"
The old man walked across the room and stared for a moment at the silent ship outside. "I hope I can make you understand. We had to come here. We had no choice. We couldn't do what we wanted any other way than to come here—first. Before anybody else."
"But why here? They're building a rocket there in Arizona. They'll be up here in a few days, maybe a few weeks—"
"Approximately forty-eight hours," corrected Ingersoll quietly. "Within forty-eight hours the Arizona rocket will be here. If the Russian rocket doesn't get here first."
"It doesn't make sense. It won't do you any good to be here if the Earth is blasted to bits. Why come here? And why bring me here, of all people? What do you want with me?"