Mikal's plan was for the Group to divide into two units. One, the larger of the two, would go—at the proper time—to Kaidor V, there to establish contact with the Provincial Governor and try by any means to dissuade him from his plan to defy the Thirty Suns Government. There were several among the Group who felt that such an approach to Santane would succeed where harsher methods might well fail in the face of the Thirtieth Decant's hidden power. It was Mikal's plan to lead this delegation himself in a starship now being fitted in the central pit of the tunnel maze.
But Kant Mikal did not delude himself that Santane could be won by arguments. Another expedition to the Kaidor Sun would be dispatched at the same time. A small two-man destroyer that had been rendered—Mikal claimed—"undetectable," would leave the Atmion system with the larger vessel and land on Kaidor III, a planet uninhabited save for a few bands of degenerated experimental subjects dumped there by Santane's biological ecologists. Mikal took care to point out that Kaidor III had two large land-masses, and the landing by the two members of the Group selected for that duty would be made on the land-mass unoccupied by the unfortunate subhumans.
This expedition would remain on Kaidor III to await word from the first as to the success or failure of the Group's plan. Failing to hear from them, or hearing of failure, the small ship would proceed to Kaidor V and try to wrest the secret of the virus weapon from Santane. Plainly enough, the second expedition into the Thirtieth Decant would be a last, spasmodic attempt to save something from the ruins of galactic war. That phrase stayed with Jerrold as he listened to Kant Mikal. To save something from the ruins. That, he told himself, might well be the best the Group could accomplish with their meager resources.
During the hours that Deve was working in the Fortress, Jerrold wandered freely through the maze of underground tunnels and chambers that the Group had built. The original catacombs had been built a thousand years earlier, and the men and women of the Group had expanded and refurbished the forgotten maze to suit their purposes. Jerrold was continually amazed at what they had been able to accomplish with so little at their command and under a shroud of almost complete secrecy.
Life in the tunnels centered on the central pit—the spaceport. This, as Kant Mikal explained with considerable pride, was connected with the surface by a series of locks that emerged through the bottom of the sea in the offshore shallows down the coast from the Green Fortress. Under cover of night, a spaceship could emerge from the tunnels and lift into space without arousing the garrison of Greens who served on Atmion IV never dreaming of the quiet life beneath their feet.
Two spacecraft rested in their cradles in the pit, a medium sized merchantman, the "Star Cluster," and a Fleet scout-destroyer, "Serpent." Jerrold recognized both vessels as craft that had long ago been reported lost in space in Admiralty headquarters back on Terminus. The Serpent still carried its Fleet insigne of the Spaceship and Sun, a reminder to Aram of his former life and of the immense power of the Thirty Suns Navy. He knew only too well the position of the Group in the coming silent struggle between the galactic Tetrarchy and the rebellious Santane. They were the smallest, weakest corner in a vicious triangular madness that threatened to smash the entire civilization of the Thirty Suns.
His personal happiness at being with Deve Jennet again, and free of the haunting pain of her supposed betrayal, was mitigated by a realization of the dangers they would soon face when the Group's quixotic plan went into operation. Nor were these forebodings lessened when Kant Mikal informed him that he and Deve were the unanimous choices of the Group for the second—and secret—expedition into the Kaidor Province.
"It will be your purpose," Kant Mikal told him again, "to save something from the wreckage if all else fails...."