"It does. Or rather, it will—so soon as I hold in these hands the weapon of the power projectile."
Mury's voice became orotund. His hands rested lightly on the pilot's controls before him and he gazed into space-darkness as if toward an invisible dawn. "When a Terrestial city goes skyward in one terrific blast of disintegration—When Pi Mesa and Dynamopolis vanish together from the face of Earth in a warningless holocaust—Then Earth will realize the truth, if only through deception."
Ryd's veins were trickling ice water instead of warm blood, and his nerve centers were paralyzed. It was too big for him, and his courage was gone again.
Mury talked on, and his voice was that of one sincerely and earnestly trying to convince:
"Earth's government has made peace with the Martians, but the instinct of the people infallibly distrusts the treacherous rival world. Why not—since Mars is indeed ready and avid to topple Earth from her old place as the mother-planet, mistress of the System? Mars, with twice Earth's area and five times the sunlight to drive his heliodynes—Mars with his robot millions and his human oligarchy athirst for power and glory, intoxicated with the strength of a new, raw, rich world. Only if we fight now can we escape domination. I am going to strike the blow that will wake Earth to battle, and bring her at last through pain and repentance to her age-old greatness!"
Shahrazad hurtled steadily on before the long hydrogen flares of her afterdrive, and three men sat behind her controls—and their triumph and fear and hate might have been strong enough to reach out beyond the metal shell and form an auro, not so bright but more fiercely potent, about the rushing ship.
Then young Arliess said through his teeth, "You know damn well it won't work."
"It will," said the Panclast, preternaturally calm, while his eyes were watchful on the slowly shifting dials. Somewhere behind them in bleak space sixty tons of concentrated hell was creeping up.
"You can't deceive a whole planet," exclaimed Arliess rapidly, desperately. "You can't plunge them into a war that will cost a hundred million lives, that will wreck the cities and the commerce of the whole System. There hasn't been war for seventy years ... between Earth and Mars, never...." His voice trailed off and he gasped for breath as if the cabin had grown stifling.