"They condemned me to space," she said. "They put me in that shell you found me in and a war cruiser towed it out to Pluto's orbit and cut it loose. It was an old condemned craft, its machinery outmoded. They ripped out the rockets and turned it into a prison for me.”
She made a gesture of silence at the shocked look on their faces.
"The histories don't tell that part of it," said Herb.
"They probably suppressed it," she said. "Men at war will do things that no sane man will do. They would not admit in peace the atrocities that they committed in the time of battle. They put the laboratory in the control room as a final ironic jest. So I could carry out my research, they said.
Research, they told me, I'd not need to turn over to them.”
"Would your discovery have wrecked the system?”
Gary asked.
"Yes," she said, "it would have. That's why I refused to give it to the military board. For that they called me traitor. I think they hoped to break me. I think they thought up to the very last that, faced with exile in space, I would finally crack and give it to them.”
"When you didn't," Herb said, "they couldn't back down. They couldn't afford to let you call their bluff.”
"They never found your notes," said Gary.