Jan Eliel, senior governor of the Council of Seven, pulled his red-rimmed eyes from the telecast when Curt Wing and Pat and Lt. Packer entered the consultation room.
Old as his face had stamped him those few days ago when Wing had brought the fleet back, Jan Eliel now was a broken and bent caricature of the man who held the direction of a world in his hands.
"Yes?" he asked, and the life was out of his voice.
Then he saw the four miniature earths which still glinted proudly in a row across Wing's torn and burnt tunic's left breast.
"Wing!" He rose from his seat on the telecast bench, hurried forward. "You've solved it!"
Wing shook his bandaged head. "I don't know for sure, Governor, but I think we do have a way of stopping the shadows—if there's time."
Jan Eliel ran a shaking hand through his white hair.
"I don't know. Zhan Nekel's fleet is moving faster than we thought it would, and the fleet units you smashed at the Moon have been re-organized and now are swinging toward us. That, at the most, gives us two days—and I thought we'd have at least two weeks.
"But enough of that; what is the way to stop these terrible shadows?"
Instead of answer, Wing asked: