"I hate to start quoting Patrick Henry," snapped Farradyne. "So I'll just suggest that you think over the reason why they want me at the Arsenal."
She looked at him.
"We've always been handy with a screwdriver," he said. "Our race. And we know we couldn't copy this drive before the mercurite starts to fall. But there is enough time to load up my Lancaster and take it out." He roared with harsh laughter. "You didn't mind dying if you could take me with you. Well, maybe Solans won't mind dying if we can rid the universe of a bunch of lice, either."
"And what alternative do you offer?" she whispered, white-faced.
"Complete surrender," he snarled. "Complete surrender!" And then he recalled the history he had been forced to learn as a schoolboy: history, a subject of dry dates and dry events, a factual symposium of war and war and war—of conflict and hatred and death. Then had come the realization of Peace, which started to turn the course of history from attack and reprisal, and war and defeat, and victor and vanquished. A just peace, started in the Twentieth Century, which ended oppression and subjection.
Farradyne looked at Carolyn with a cynical smile. "We demand unconditional surrender," he said bitterly. "Then we move in and number off your people. With a careful tally of our own losses, we choose a similar number from a fish-bowl. So many men to be cold-bloodedly murdered. So many virgins to be ravished. So many wives left without husbands, and so many husbands left without wives. Children to such-and-such a number left homeless, and a certain quantity made to stand in the street so that automobiles can run them down." His voice rose to a roar. "Damn it, woman, do you think we're vultures? You've pushed us around for fifty years, but now you know damned well that we have what it takes to kick back." His voice fell back to normal, even lower, as he said, "It's me asking you, now. What'll you have?"
She looked at him. "What am I?" she asked, just as quietly as he. "A species of louse to be pinched out, or an adversary vanquished? An un-victorious warrior?"
"You're what you want to be."
Carolyn turned and went up the stairs to the control room where Morgan was standing behind the pilot with a strong hammerlock closed tight. Farradyne was close behind her.
"I'll be the defeated warrior," she said. She uttered three words in her native sing-song and the man in the pilot's chair stopped struggling. She went to the radio and picked up the microphone and started to broadcast.