Our problems resolved themselves into routine, almost, after that ... a course to set, the ship to steer, messages to send to lure other globes into range of FedGov weapons.
Then, finally, the job was done. The last Kel ship save this one had been swept from space and blasted into atoms.
Now, in a rush, fatigue welled up to claim me. I slumped, half-sick. By the time our craft came to rest on Rizal, I wasn't sure I even had strength left to climb out.
Then, at last, our hatches swung open. Aid parties swarmed aboard.
I moved back out of sight. Somehow, I couldn't face the excited flummery and fawning.
Celeste Stelpa, too, seemed to have vanished. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find her.
The first party into the globeship brought paraguns and proton blasters with them. Relentlessly, they cleared out what was left of the Kel crew, pushing past me almost without notice in the grimness of their work.
Wave Two hoisted Controller Kruze and the other prisoners up from their spherical scarlet dungeon.
It was a moment to remember. For if I couldn't stand the thought of obsequiousness and adulation, Security's chief had no such inhibitions. His heavy body seemed to swell. He beamed and puffed and pranced and strutted.
Conveniently, too, he made no slightest mention of me. Without saying so in so many words, he made it ever so clear that Controller Alfred Kruze himself had saved mankind from the Kel menace.