Remember he's got the kid."
Magnusson sighed. Again he picked up one of the cubes and stared into
the clear plastic, where the three-dimensional image of a nine-year-old
girl looked out at him, smiling and innocent. His face was transparent
as the plastic cube. Mack acts tough, but he has five kids and he is as
soft as a dish of pudding where a kid is concerned.
"I know. Another thing, too. If we send out Spaceforce, after all the
riots--how many Terrans are on this planet? A few thousand, no more.
What chance would we have, if it turned into a full-scale rebellion?
None at all, unless we wanted to order a massacre. Sure, we have bombs
and dis-guns and all that.
"But would we dare to use them? And where would we be after that? We're
here to keep the pot from boiling over, to keep out of planetary
incidents, not push them along to a point where bluff won't work. That's
why we've got to pick up Rakhal before this gets out of hand."
I said, "Give me a month. Then you can move in, if you have to.
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