The image faded from the screen. As it did, Conn was looking from one to another of the people in the room with him. All were dumbfounded, most of them frightened.
"They wouldn't do it, would they?" Lorenzo Menardes was asking. "Conn, you know those people. They wouldn't really?"
"Don't depend on it, Lorenzo," Klem Zareff said. "It's hard for a lot of people to shoot somebody ten feet away with a pistol. But just sending off a missile; that's nothing but setting a lot of dials and then pushing a button."
"I'm not worrying about whether they'd do it or not," Conn said. "What I'm worrying about is how many people will believe they will."
Apparently a good many people did. Zareff's combat vehicles began reporting a cessation of fighting. The newscasts, repeating the ultimatum from Koshchei, told of fewer and fewer disorders in the city or elsewhere; by midafternoon, the rioting had stopped.
By that time, too, Rodney Maxwell was on-screen. He was, Conn noticed, wearing his pistols again.
"What happened?" he asked. "They let you out on bail?"
Maxwell shook his head. "Charges dismissed; they didn't have anything to charge me with in the first place. But they haven't let me out yet."
"You're wearing your guns."