s," he said at last. "Yes, I got it. No; I'll release it to the
newsmen. All right. Fine." He hung up.

"Twelve minutes ago," he said slowly, "the old _Lunik IX_ smashed
into Moonbase One and blew it to smithereens. The Soviets say that a
meteor hit _Lunik IX_ at just the right angle to slow it down enough
to make it hit the base. They send their condolences."

* * * * *

Brian Taggert lay back on the couch in his office and folded his hands
complacently on his abdomen. "So Donna's theory held water and so did
mine. The accident was due to human intervention. Forsythe saw
something from space hitting Moonbase One and assumed it was a meteor.
He never dreamed the Soviets would drop old _Lunik IX_ on it."

Senator Kerotski carefully lit a cigar. "There's going to be an awful
lot of fuss in the papers, but the President is going to announce that
he accepts the Soviet story. I convinced him that it is best to let
the Soviets think they're a long way ahead of us in the space race
now. There's nothing like a little complacency to slow someone down."

"How'd you convince him?"

"Asked the same question you asked me. Now that we have the Ch'ien
space drive, what purpose does a moon base serve? None at all, of
course."

Donna Tadesco leaned forward in her chair. "Did you happen to notice
the sequence of events, senator? We were warned that the base would be
struck. We decided to abandon it. We organized the biggest space lift
in history to evacuate the men and the most valuable instruments. But
the Soviets thought we were sending equipment _up_ instead of bringing
it _down_. They didn't know what we were up to, but they decided to
put a stop to it, so they dropped an abandoned space satellite on it.

"If we hadn't decided to evacuate the base, it would never have
happened.

"_That_ is human intervention with a vengeance. We still don't know
whether or not Forsythe's predictions will ever do us any good or not.
Every time we've taken steps to avoid one of his prophesied
catastrophes, we've done the very thing that brought them about."

The senator puffed his cigar in thoughtful silence.

"We'll just have to keep working with him," Taggert said. "Maybe we'll
eventually make sense out of this precognition thing.

"At least we've got what we wanted. The Soviets think they've put us
back ten years; they figure they've got more time, now, to get their
own program a long ways ahead.

"When