He turned to Terry. "Bring me up to date."
"They contacted me—I wasn't suspected by the police, you know—and we organized a small group of the scientists we felt we could trust. We told them all about Demarzule and our blunder in bringing him back. We organized for the purpose of destroying him by any means possible, but of course we had no means. The force shell prevented direct attack on the Carlson, so we tried filtering in with the Disciples. Four of us were caught and killed.
"We didn't try to communicate with you, because we felt it was too dangerous, and knew that you would be doing anything possible. We succeeded in getting enough of our number in for the end of the show and passing weapons to some of the scientists on the project, but we apparently lost all our men without doing damage to the Great One. Only getting ourselves lost in that mob saved us three. I suspect that they feel so secure in the protection of Demarzule now that that is their only reason for not gassing the whole mob in order to get us."
"What's your next move?" asked Illia.
"The Lavoisier came in two weeks ago for supplies. Most of the crew are on our side, and the rest aren't there any more. Phyfe and Dreyer are already aboard, as well as the rest of the scientists of our group. All we can do is point the nose up and get going as fast as we can travel. It may be only a matter of hours until Demarzule is aware of us and sends a fleet in pursuit. After we get out into space, the rest is up to the boss." He jerked a thumb in Underwood's direction.
"What do you mean?" asked Underwood.
"I mean that as top-dog physicist and the only one besides us somewhat non-combatant archeologists and semanticists who understands the Sirenian lingo, not to mention your familiarity with Demarzule, you got yourself elected chairman of this delegation."
Underwood laughed shortly and bitterly. "I'm responsible for the mess, so I should be the one responsible for finding a way out. Is that it?"
"We'll turn you over to the psychiatric department if you don't cut that out," said Terry grimly.