John Thorn smiled, his arm around the slender waist of the pirate girl.
"We're going to be needed out there in the Zone, sir,” he answered. “It's not going to be so easy to bring law and order to those wild asteroids, even though you've caused all eight plants to recognize the Zone as a ninth independent world."
"Curse me if I like this idea of me sidin’ with law and order after all these years,” grumbled old Stilicho, his wrinkled face dismayed. “All I know is piracy, and—"
"You'll like it, Stilicho,” Lana told him fondly. “We'll need a strong space-police to cover the whole Zone, and it will take plenty of force to subdue some of the outlaw asteroids."
"Plenty of fighting, ye say?” echoed the old Martian. He spat rial juice thoughtfully. “Well, maybe at that it might—"
"Every world in the system will have only friendship for the Zone,” the Chairman told them earnestly. “Now that the League is gone forever, and popular government restored on the outer planets, I hope and pray that interplanetary war is over forever."
"And the scientific expedition to Erebus?” John Thorn asked.
"It rockets off next week,” the Chairman said, a deep sadness in his eyes. “It carries sufficient cyclotron equipment to bring dissolution and peaceful death to the doomed ones of Erebus."
A hush fell upon them all. And then the Chairman, his fine face working with emotion, shook their hands in farewell.
Lana started to move away, but Thorn checked her.