Perhaps I shouldn't have felt that way, because if the Wendel Combine took over the Colony three or four times that number of innocent people would perish, or sink into degradation and become completely enslaved. But I did feel that way and—well, I wouldn't have to live with what I'd done, because I'd be killed by the blast. But I didn't want that on my conscience even as a dead man.
I couldn't go through with it, but had I ever really intended to? It didn't mean I couldn't win, didn't change what I'd come to do. If I could carry my bluff through without flinching, right up to the zero-count instant, there was a very good chance that Wendel would crack. A very good chance still.
I had the highest cards in the deck and was only handicapped in one way. If the zero-count instant came and Wendel didn't crack I couldn't play them.
I've never really believed in miracles. But if you're holding what you think are the highest cards, and something happens to your hand you never dreamed could happen—if you look and see you've got a card that's even higher, just slipped in between the others as a gift ... well, that's pretty close to a miracle, isn't it?
I thought when Sherwood's image appeared on the screen he'd be sitting alone behind his desk, with his thumb on the rocket-release button. But he wasn't alone and when I saw who was with him I almost stopped breathing....
Joan was with him and she was looking straight at me out of the screen.
"Don't do it, Ralph!" she pleaded. "Oh, God, no—"
Then I saw that she was staring past me and without turning I knew that she was appealing to Wendel with the same look of pleading desperation in her eyes. "If he gives the signal his command will be obeyed. And he'll do it unless you stop him! When you've lived with a man in the intimacy of marriage—yes, that's important and I have to say it—you know him better than anyone else. You know what he's capable of. He'll give the signal unless you do as he says, because the insignia he's wearing gives him no choice. If you don't stop him now ... you'll die with him!"
I turned then and stared straight at Wendel. I'd never seen a man sag before in quite the way he did. All of the life seemed to go out of his eyes. His defiance gave way to a look of utter hopelessness, of abject surrender, and he sank so low in his chair that he seemed on the verge of slumping to the floor, despite Lynton's grip on his shoulders.
His voice, when he spoke, scarcely rose above a whisper. "All right, Graham," he said. "You win."