Chambers may have been a political science professor, but he knew no more about revolution than she did, was no more qualified than she to lead one.
He'd made her kill the guards because he was afraid to do it himself. She turned back to her work, disgusted.
He started back for the truck, then stopped. "I can get the rest of the equipment. You set up. After all, you're the mass comm major."
She nodded. He finished unloading, then came to stand beside her as she was getting the camera where she wanted it.
"The schedule calls for us to transmit in forty-seven minutes," Chambers said. He scuffed the toe of one boot nervously in the sand.
"We'll be ready." She was peering into the camera, then looked up at him. "Why don't you stand about three feet in front of me . . . here." She pointed.
He stood in the wrong place.
"No," she said, gesturing. "More to the left. I want. . ." But Chambers didn't move. Exasperated, she came around the camera and took him by the shoulders to show him. He grasped her hand and looked at her meaningfully. Forty-seven minutes. It would be a while before the others returned from setting charges around the base's perimeter.
Her expression hardened. She pushed him where she wanted him, pulled her hand away, and stepped behind the camera again. "Better. I can keep you in frame and still see the barrels in the background." She
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wanted the barrels in the shot to prove they were actually on the Jericho Valley site. Some of the barrels had been knocked over, no doubt during the struggle. At first she wanted to ask Chambers to set them upright, then decided it would be more effective to leave them and show that a battle had taken place.
Chambers was not offended by the rebuttal; maybe he took hope from the fact she hadn't been angered by it. He smiled at her.
"You're cheerful," she said without enthusiasm.
Suddenly he was hyper, talkative; perhaps, Urick decided, the realization hit him that he was really going to be on worldwide television.
"Something about the irony of pirating a U.S. communications satellite to broadcast our demands always makes me smile," he answered.
She was not amused. "Smile on camera and no one will take us seriously." The way he was grinning made her uncomfortable.
"If they don't"—Chambers was suddenly serious —"we'll just have to blow this place up . . . and send a big fat nuclear cloud of radioactive waste floating over their nice middle-class homes."
He smiled again. She couldn't return it; for the first time she saw everything clearly. He was a madman, this Chambers, a charismatic madman with a talent for making his insanity sound logical, even attractive, to misfits such as she. The premonition of death came over her again, this time stronger than ever, and so bitterly cold that she shivered in the early morning chill. Chambers was too wrapped up in his dream of global fame to notice. He, Urick, Finney, Mossoud, Teal, Einhorn—they were all as dead as the bodies stacked in the yard, even if they were still walking around.
Consciousness seeped back.
A long darkness. Then awareness; then sweltering, agonizing suffocation. He was trapped in some type of metal confine, and there was not enough air. He gasped, probing frantically until he found the roof of the confine. The metal was corroded there; he encountered a hole and pushed with all his newfound energy. The metal crumpled under the pressure. He was free.
Panting, dazed, he pulled himself out. . . but the light was painfully harsh. He hid for a moment in a patch of shade created by the containers, and tried to understand where he was. This was not home: the air was too rich, the gravity too heavy, the light too strong.
Memories of the battle returned. They had been successful at first, claiming victory when the sickness had overcome them. Defeat so close to success had been bitter; best for them to die here, on this alien rock, than to return home vanquished. He had been trying to maneuver his ship back