So much work, she thought. So many years of planning. Androids who had worn no mark upon their forehead and who had been formed to look exactly like the humans they replaced. And other androids who had marks upon their foreheads, but who had not been the androids made in the laboratories of the eightieth century. Elaborate networks of espionage, waiting for the day Sutton would come home. Years of puzzling over the records of the past, trying to separate the truth from the half-truth and the downright error.
Years of watching and of waiting, parrying the counterespionage of the Revisionists, laying the groundwork for the day of action. And being careful…always careful. For the eightieth century must not know, must not even guess.
But there had been unseen factors.
Morgan had come back and warned Adams that Sutton must be killed.
Two humans had been planted on the asteroid.
Although those two factors could not account entirely for what had happened. There was another factor somewhere.
She stood at the window, looking out at the rising moon, and her brows knit into crinkling lines of thought. But she was too tired. No thought would come.
Except defeat.
Defeat would explain it all.
Sutton might be dead and that would be defeat, utter and complete defeat. Victory for an officialdom that was at once too timid and too vicious to take any active part in the struggle of the book. An officialdom that sought to keep the status quo, willing to wipe out centuries of thought to safely maintain its foothold in the galaxy.