"But _why_?" Tam Peters was standing, eyes blazing, staring down at
the big man behind the desk, the bitterness of long, weary years
tearing into his voice, almost blinding him. "_Why is that the way
things are?_ What have I done? Why do we have this mess, where a man
isn't worth any more than the color of his skin--"

Dave Hawke slammed his fist on the desk, and his voice roared out in
the close air of the office. "Because it was coming!" he bellowed.
"It's been coming and now it's here--and there's nothing on God's
earth can be done about it!"

Tam's jaw sagged, and he stared at the man behind the desk.
"Dave--think what you're saying, Dave--"

"I know right well what I'm saying," Dave Hawke roared, his eyes
burning bitterly. "Oh, you have no idea how long I've thought, the
fight I've had with myself, the sacrifices I've had to make. You
weren't born like I was, you weren't raised on the wrong side of the
fence--well, there was an old, old Christmas story that I used to
read. Years ago, before they burned the Sharkie books. It was about an
evil man who went through life cheating people, hating and hurting
people, and when he died, he found that every evil deed he had ever
done had become a link in a heavy iron chain, tied and shackled to his
waist. And he wore that chain he had built up, and he had to drag it,
and drag it, from one eternity to the next--his name was Marley,
remember?"

"Dave, you're not making sense--"

"Oh, yes, all kinds of sense. Because you Sharkies have a chain, too.
You started forging it around your ankles back in the classical Middle
Ages of Earth. Year by year you built it up, link by link, built it
stronger, heavier. You could have stopped it any time you chose, but
you didn't ever think of that. You spread over the world, building up
your chain, assuming that things would always be just the way they
were, just the way you wanted them to be."

The big man stopped, breathing heavily, a sudden sadness creeping into
his eyes, his voice taking on a softer tone. "You were such fools," he
said softly. "You waxed and grew strong, and clever, and confident,
and the more power you had, the more you wanted. You fought wars, and
then bigger and better wars, until you couldn't be satisfied with
gunpowder and TNT any longer. And finally you divided your world into
two armed camps, and brought Fury out of her box, fought with the
power of the atoms themselves, you clever Sharkies--and when the du