A well-planned series of lies, elaborate, complex, provoking. Find out facts. Try to postpone or avert any immediate attack on Earth. Reduce things to as individual a level as possible. He had one advantage: from his observations to this point, the Oligarch culture seemed not to have changed its basic pattern. Evolution had merely moved that pattern forward a hundred years, solidified its static essence. Cold efficiency, egomania, class superiority—the system supported by scientific method and a fanatical, one-track dogma based on paranoia.
He had fought this force a long time. He thought he understood it.
"Your name, soldier. Your unit and rank."
"Danton West," he said. He remembered the line-officer's words, a quick frame of reference. "Captain. Second Army. That was a while back. More lately of the Revolutionary Forces."
"Revolutionary—"
Danton saw their expressions alter, almost imperceptibly, but alter they did under the masks. When that fifty-years war had ended, none of the central ruling clique, the Oligarch Council, had been found. And one thing seemed incredible to Danton as he stood there:
These three men and women seemed to be the same individuals who had made up that Oligarch Council on Earth a hundred years before.
That was logical enough. Except—
They hadn't aged at all. There had been no sign of change.
That soldier back there had said, "... They're supposed to live forever. They never grow old."