Now there were cries of: "He looks like his father!" "See, the same brow, the same bearing!" "The eyes are the same, I tell you. We have Richard Tremaine with us all over again!" And always, from all sides: "Hail, Tremaine!"
Alan caught Laura's gaze and tried to smile at her. She was on the verge of tears. "The sycophantic hypocrites," she said. "It's disgusting, carrying on like this while people are dying all over the solar system."
"It isn't for me," Alan told her desperately. "It's in memory of my father."
Laura's eyelids squeezed shut. Tears on her cheeks, she walked blindly ahead, supported by her father's arm. "I hate you, Alan Tremaine," she said.
"Tremaine," Bennett Keifer said half an hour later, shaking his hand with vigorous enthusiasm. "You look so much like your dead father I could have picked you out of any crowd. Sit down, boy."
Alan shook his head. "Thanks, but I'll stand." General Olmstead and his daughter had been left off elsewhere while Alan had been ushered into the Administration Center of Red Sands, a great rectangular structure carved from the subterranean rock of Mars. Finally, he had stood face to face with Bennett Keifer. A big, handsome man in the uniform of a Federation colonel, Keifer had flashing eyes and a direct manner which Alan found disarming.
"I'm sure you have many questions," Keifer said.
"Just one. Did my father sanction this armed revolt?"
"What a strange question. Of course he did."