"Not doing much good, are they, Kane?"
The big man hulked above him, beefy face florid but split with a relaxed, confident grin. Jon broke his long silence.
"Starn has told you he would surrender! Why can't you accept it, and then I promise you I'll—"
"You'll do what? You'd pull everything in the book and you know it, Kane, and we'd end up having to kill you or be killed ourselves. And if you were to die." Jon turned his glance toward Deanne, saw her shudder, then turn her eyes away from the screens, bitter defeat mingled tightly with the tears in them. "And anyway," Stine was saying, "Starn's not the boss anymore! And what good d'you think it's going to do me to push over a has-been? B-Haaq is the one who's calling their plays now, Kane. And B-Haaq is the boy who wants to fight! Too bad you didn't kill him when you had the chance! Look at him out there! Trying to tell me he can fix it, or anything I can do to it! Telling me if I move this ship in a mile closer he'll blow me out of Space! Oh, brother—"
"He could, Stine," Jon said. And the big man whirled.
"With those antiquated pop guns he carries? Don't try to make me angry, Kane. He's going to sweat it out there until he and his whole damn crew drops. And then I'm sending you in! By that time things'll be so bad I'll know I can trust you. You're the type, Kane! Fight like hell up to the last second, and then comes the noble, heroic sacrifice part. Oh, you'll do the job, all night after you've sat here watching long enough!"
Jon bit his lip, watched the big man stalk back and forth before the wide banks of screens.
"I could beat him in less time than it takes to tell it with E-blasters!" Stine was saying. "But they say there's a better way of winning arguments than with guns, don't they, Master Kane? Slaves are always more valuable than corpses, for one thing, and for another, I think people ought to know that Martin Stine has more to his string than guns alone! Yes...." His broad back was to both Jon and Deanne, now, and he was staring out through a wide port into the gem-studded blackness, and his words were for his own ears. "They will know who is a technician and who is not! The ITA is weak with age—and the weak become the slaves, and the strong become the masters! They shall see."
"Stine, you're a fool!"
The big man turned, faced Jon, and his big face blanched in sudden anger, and then the color flooded back to it and he laughed.