"Right here, sir. You had a brief interview with this man, then remained here with me, discussing the water ultimatum."
"You see?" Keifer said. "Right here."
Perhaps he had jumped to an unwarranted conclusion, Alan thought. He said, "What is this water ultimatum?"
Keifer dismissed the Internal Security Officer, then explained, "We're in trouble, Alan. An hour ago, the Earth colonial office contacted us with an ultimatum. Either we lay down our arms and tell the provisional governments on the other Outworlds to surrender their authority, or Mars' water supply is cut off. We were given one hour."
"But Earth's own military forces here on Mars would die of thirst."
Keifer shrugged. "Apparently they're expendable. Of course, I rejected the ultimatum."
"What can you do?"
"I don't know," Keifer said. "They can do what they say, unfortunately."
It would be simple, Alan knew. Arid Mars had depended for water which flowed in an adequate trickle from the polar caps until the coming of the Earth colony. For the past twenty years, though, water-surplus Venus supplied Mars with its water. A warp had been opened in space from the Venusian orbit to the Martian, with life-giving water flowing through from the second planet to the fourth at the rate of fifty thousand gallons per second. It had been a stupendous sub-space engineering feat, for the warp varied in length from sixty to two hundred million miles, depending upon the orbital positions of the two planets. Earth could shut the warp at any point along its vast length. Parched, arid Mars would be forced to lay down its arms in a matter of days.
"Captain Haddix is taking a ship along the warp-route," Keifer said, "assuming the ultimatum is in earnest. He might be able to find the break, but I doubt if he could repair it. Would you care to go along?"