"Stop!" President Holland's firm voice boomed across the room. "Are we all animals here? Tremaine has the right to speak. With the Earth about to die, are we not even going to clutch at straws? Tremaine knows we can keep him here until tomorrow night, yet he came. I want to hear him. I will hear him if I have to do it alone."
The Ministers assumed their places at the table sheepishly. The television cameras panned closer to Alan. He could sense it: five billion people were watching him.
He talked rapidly. He didn't know how long they would listen. He told them how he had gone to Mars to take his father's place, told them how Richard Tremaine, then Eugene Talbrick had been murdered in cold blood by Bennett Keifer because he favored violence and complete dissolution of the union and they did not. He told them how Keifer still intended to use the name of Tremaine because Alan's father had been loved by the Outworlders and respected by the government of Earth. He told them how General Olmstead had been taken and eventually killed. They were listening now. Still doubtful, but listening. He could sense that some of the hostility had gone from them. They were weary now, and without hope in their eyes.
He went on, "I still think more than half the Outworlders would rally behind me. Maybe I don't deserve their faith, but they remember my father who spent his whole life and finally died in their cause. Let them know I'm here. Beam it to the Outworlds. Tell them I renounce Keifer as a traitor to his own people and to the Earth that spawned them. I'll talk if you want. I'll go on the air."
"Fool!" cried the Minister from France bitterly. "Even if it would work, what does it matter? Tomorrow we all die."
"There's a chance you won't," Alan said. "I'm coming to that. To bring you up to date, I landed on Earth a few hours ago and left General Olmstead's daughter with a friend at the PBT Fraternity House of New Washington University. You can check everything I said with her."
"You said there was a chance...."
"Yes. When did Keifer give his ultimatum?"
"Forty eight hours ago."
"That's what I figured. Unless the cobalt bomb was on its way to Earth for at least eight or ten days, it couldn't reach here from Mars or Venus by tomorrow night!"