"But Womar..." Choking, Jarl came up beside her. His thin-stretched mask of bleakness fell away. "Sais, it's madness!"
"Because of the primitives, you mean? Because of the Federation ban, the deserts—?" Sais laughed aloud, and there was scorn and fury in it. "Yes, Jarl Corvett, it's utter madness! That's why my father went in secret, leaving you behind to call him traitor! He wanted no other to die with him on such a hopeless quest. So he sent his message to rey Gundre, wagered his own life on the one slim, desperate chance that he could bring destruction to the Federation!"
The fears, the doubts ... they all were dying. And as they died, a gnawing sickness grew in Jarl Corvett. Of a sudden he was himself traitor, betrayer, for his very doubting.
"But why—?" he whispered. "Why did he go, Sais? What secret could be greater than the one he gave to Gundre?"
Sais laughed again, more softly. Once more, she came close to him, as if unwilling, even here, to speak of this thing above a breathless murmur. "The robots, Jarl; the robots!"
He stared. "The robots—?"
"Yes!" Now her voice shook with excitement. "Jarl, they were no idle fancy, no toys brought to being out of an old man's dreams. They were models of warriors—the great, inanimate metal warriors of that alien race from beyond the stars. He built them from plans in the books he found in the wrecked ship."
For Jarl, it was as if a curtain had suddenly been pulled aside. His mind flashed back to Vesta, to Wassreck's workshop ... back to the great hall's echoing vastness, and the towering metal monsters that, shoulder to shoulder, lined its walls.
Sais still was speaking: "He knew that the outlaw worlds were doomed, Jarl. The Federation was too strong. The projector—it was only another weapon. For victory, the raider fleet needed something more."