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PART II: JOSEKI

The conversation sounded like a panic in the zoo, with roars, snarls, shrieks and bugling mixed together. To humans it would have been deafening. To those in the room it was merely normal.

Far, far back on their ancestry had been a thing analogous to a tree-climbing dinosaur. Like the hadosaurs of the Late Cretaceous, these creatures had elaborate hollow crests which could modulate their roars. In their descendants the crest had disappeared and the only resonating chambers were left in the much-reduced snout. Still, their language was as much an outgrowth of the climbing reptiloids bellowing out their territorial challenges from the trees of extinct forests as human languages had grown out of the mating and foraging calls of apes ranging across equally extinct savannas.

“We first detected the object, here,” a taloned finger tapped the chart, “when it emitted a strong burst of interference. We examined it and determined it was an orbiting artifact of unknown origin. It was obviously powered, probably crewed and like nothing in our records.”

The superior one grunted.

“A ship was launched toward it,” the Master of Skies said delicately. “Then permission was granted to use the High Drive to reach it even faster.”

The superior’s beak twitched open at the reminder, as if to rend someone. The first one hurried on.

“Then, one revolution ago, the thing disappeared.”

“You mean you lost it?”

The other tossed his head in negation. “I mean it vanished from our instruments.”

The other remained impassive. “And then?”

Again the talon tapped on the chart. “Then it reappeared here, within home space.”

The superior one froze, neither moving nor blinking. “You are certain you did not lose it? That there are not two of them?”

“It might be possible to lose the thing out here,” he gestured to the first position. “But it could not approach here without being detected.”

“And you conclude?”

The Master of Skies hesitated, hunching slightly in anticipation of what was to come.

“It apparently travelled faster than light.”

His superior tossed his head and his beak clacked like a gunshot. The underling flinched away. Then the most powerful being in the system froze in contemplation.

“A complication,” the superior said at last.

There were cultures who built faster-than-light ships, but not many of them and usually not for long. FTL ships were wasteful, ruinously expensive and disruptive. It took the resources of an entire system to build one and the craft was as large as a colony.

Still, any culture that travelled by FTL ship was a culture to be treated respectfully. They were obviously young, powerful and suicidal.

“Do we know the lineage?”

The Master of Skies gestured negation. “The design is unfamiliar to us.”

His superior indicated assent. That was hardly surprising. Lineages so foolish as to build starships seldom lasted more than a few handfuls of cycles.

“What do they want?”

“They have not communicated with us. They give no sign of wishing us to communicate yet.”

“How large is the vessel?”

“We are still trying to find out,” the Master of Skies said. Actually he had a figure, but he was not about to trouble his master with it until it had been checked. Very thoroughly checked.

With variations the scene was repeated in more than a dozen floating cities scattered about the solar system.

###

Captain Peter Jenkins felt rumpled. His stomach was sour from all the coffee he had been drinking. He had been off the bridge for eight hours but the caffeine and his worries had left him with only fitful sleep. Externally he knew he looked as trim as ever, but he felt rumpled.

“Are there any signs of anything being launched toward us?” Jenkins asked DeRosa as soon as he reached his station.

Iron Alice shook her head. She looked as neat and calm as always, he noted with just a twinge of jealousy, even though she was coming off watch rather than going on.

“Not that we can tell. Of course the inner system’s thick with traffic, but nothing seems to be coming our way.”

“Any sign of communication?”

“None of that, either. It looks like our hosts are lying low. Maybe they want to see what our next move will be.”

“The next move’s up to them, unless the Ship’s Council decided otherwise.”

###

His title meant, roughly, “The Leader,” or more precisely “The One Who Rules As The Embodied Will Of His People.” His name identified an exact place in his lineage, although it no more indicated that he held that place than a human named “Smith” necessarily worked at the shaping of metal. It was irrelevant and simply a tag. Like all of his kind, he preferred to be known by his title.

“It is how large?” he demanded.

“No more than one-twentieth the size of a small Colony,” his Master of Skies said.

The Leader did not clack his beak. Instead he froze and stayed immobile for a space of three breaths.

“Indeed? The others know of it, of course.”

That was rhetorical. Space contains few secrets from those with the right instruments.

“We could not estimate accurately at its former position. Now we are certain. It is undeniably a starship and many times smaller than any known starship.”

The Leader turned his great yellow eyes on his subordinate, as if measuring him for challenge.

“I thought that was impossible.”

The Master of Skies’ only reply was the alien equivalent of a shrug.

“Something utterly new then? A new kind of drive.”

“It would seem so. Our libraries make no mention of the roar of electromagnetic noise that accompanied its move. Also it seems to reappear with excess velocity which must be bled off to achieve orbit. There is no mention of that either.”

Again The Leader froze, for even longer.

“A prize,” he said at last. “A very great prize. We must act boldly and decisively now.”

“We have already acted boldly in launching a ship without the Council’s permission.”

The Leader made a dismissing gesture. “We will act more boldly yet, now that we know this thing’s worth. Open communication with this ship immediately!”

“There is a difficulty.”

“Do not pule to me about difficulties; do it! And do not fear the Council.”

“It is not the Council. These creatures do not respond to our invitations.” He paused. “They may not be a known species.”

Now The Leader did snap his beak. “It does not matter. Initiate communications.”

“Uninvited? But—”

“But do it! You say they may be an unknown species? Then assume they do not follow the conventions. Now leave me.”

As the Master of Skies bowed out, The Leader was already beginning to pace the room, his inelegant springy stride carrying him nearly off the floor in the lighter gravity of his headquarters.

The alien turned again to look off the terrace and out over the patchwork under the ruddy sunlight.

The Citadel was a great shining sphere partly buried in the end of the cylinder. From the terrace the surface fell away sharply in a series of steep steps to the floor of the cylinder which stretched away almost as far as the eye could see.

From the floor of the cylinder the Citadel stood out like a sun. It was at the sunward end of the habitat so that every waking when the traditionalists rose to give homage to the sun they also honored the Citadel and the one who inhabited it.

It was not accident that it was so.

Even though The Leader despised the traditionalists and their mire of ancient rituals, he continued to live in the Citadel and did nothing to discourage the waking Rite.

Far, far off, almost lost in the misty distance at the opposite end of this cylinder, he could barely make out the brownish smudge that marked the huddle of workers’ quarters where he had been born and grown to adulthood. From there, stretching almost to his feet, was an expanse of carefully landscaped vegetation, an artificial forest hiding the administrative complexes, the home groves of the powerful sublineages and other centers of wealth and power.

The sight soothed him. It always did.

###

The Council President was not soothed. “So small?” he demanded of his Master of Skies. “This thing is so small and travels between the stars.”

“So it would appear.”

The Council President’s talons twitched, as if to anchor himself more firmly to a tree while a storm blew through the forest.

“There is more,” the Master of Skies said deferentially. “We estimate,” he stressed the word hard, “that these beings’ drive must be at least five hands of hands more efficient than the star drive we know.” He paused, waiting for a reaction.

“Which means?”

“Which means that—assuming the estimate is correct and the device is not unbelievably difficult to fabricate—faster than light travel to other stars is economically feasible.”

The Council President froze, not even breathing, until the Master of Skies almost moved to shock him out of it. Then he inhaled a deep ragged gulp of air and turned back to his subordinate.

“Are you sure?”

The Master of Skies tossed his head. “No, but it seems likely.”

“We will have this drive. Open communications with this lineage at once. Do not wait for them to talk to us. Now. Immediately!”

The Master of Skies bobbed low and scurried out the door, leaving his master staring and shaking in his wake.

The Council President lowered himself back into his seating sling. His hands were shaking. What a prize! All-Father what a prize!

With a drive like that his lineage could spread throughout half the galaxy in a few generations. And the daughter colonies would be securely tied to the Mother no matter what star they circled. He had to have that drive! Somehow he had to get the secret from these strangers.

There must be a meeting of the Colonial Council, he decided. We must coordinate, plan together. And in doing so, he added to himself, he would have to make sure his own Colony came out on top.

To begin, he would act in the Council’s name. He would open communications with the aliens without waiting for their invitation. Improper, perhaps, but it was an extraordinary circumstance and demanded extraordinary measures.

###

“It looks like things are picking up,” Pete Carlotti told the group. “In the last twenty-four hours we have gotten modulated laser light from no less than six colonies.”

Once again a dozen people were packed into the small forward conference room, halfway up toward the hub at the very forward edge of Spin, including Carlotti, Sharon Dolan, Autro DeLorenzo, Father Simon (for reasons that were obscure even to the priest) and, of course, Andrew Aubrey and C.D. MacNamara in their roles as president and vice president of the Ship’s Council—plus Jenkins and Ludenemeyer, at the captain’s insistence. They had been constituted a committee by the Ship’s Council to oversee contact with the aliens.

For the last three days all they had done was watch and speculate. The huge floating cities throughout the system had remained mute.

“What do you make of it?” Jenkins asked.

“It looks like they are trying to talk to us.”

Aubrey nodded. “Can we answer them?”

“Not like that,” Carlotti said. “We don’t have a laser in that frequency or any of the equipment we’d need to make it work.”

“All right then, reply by radio.”

“Do you think they will figure it out?”

Jenkins smiled grimly. “One thing I think we can count on, Doctor, is the intelligence of our hosts.”

“There’s one other problem,” Carlotti said. “A linguist. I’ve checked the files and we don’t have anyone on board who is trained in linguistics.”

Of course not, Jenkins thought. Why the hell should we?

He turned to Sharon. “Dr. Dolan, what about you?”

Sharon shook her head, reddish curls flying. “I barely met the language requirements for my Ph.D.”

“Perhaps I could be of assistance,” Father Simon put in.

“Do you have a talent for languages, Father?”

“Well, I do know Latin and the discipline that involves is a wonderful basis for learning any language.” Or so we used to tell them at seminary, the priest thought.

Carlotti considered. “Well, it doesn’t look like you’re going to be doing much astrometry. If you think you can handle it, do it.”

“I’ll need help, of course,” Father Simon said. “Especially computer time.”

“You’ll get everything we can give you, Father,” Jenkins promised. “Even if we have to strip the programs out of the navigation computers.”

###

To Billy Toyoda it was a sheer waste of time. Why bother reporting to the captain in person when you could call him up on the screen quicker and easier? But the captain wanted to see him in person, so he pulled himself onto the bridge and over to Jenkins’ station.

“Toyoda reporting.” He even tried to salute like he’d been told to.

Jenkins looked up in distaste. Not only was the computerman’s salute ludicrous, the man was nearly fifteen minutes late. But he decided to confine himself to more immediate matters.

“Mr. Toyoda, it is customary when on the bridge to anchor yourself to something,” Jenkins said caustically. “This is a ship, ships do move and it is very distracting for bridge personnel to have to dodge flying bodies when they change acceleration.”

“Sorry, Captain,” Billy said, unabashed, and did a fairly neat but inexpert maneuver that brought his toes in contact with the deck.

“I would also appreciate it if in the future you would respond on a more timely basis when I send for you.”

“Sorry, Captain. I was in the middle of something.”

Jenkins decided to leave it at that.

“Mr. Toyoda, we are going to need to use the computers to communicate with the aliens. Your superior tells me you are the best man for this kind of thing, so I’m assigning you to handle it.”

“Heavy job,” Billy Toyoda told the captain lazily. “We’ve got MIPS to burn, but this stuff isn’t specialized for what you want.”

“Specialized or not, it’s what we’ve got. How soon can you get a translation program up and running?”

“Hard to say. I’m gonna have to scrounge around to see what we’ve got that we can convert.” He paused and grinned mischievously. “Probably have to cannibalize stuff from the astronomers’ software.”

“How long?” Jenkins asked, keeping a tight rein on his temper.

The computerman shrugged. “We can have the basic stuff in a few days. Beyond that, depends on how complex things are and how good their sand is.”

“Sand?”

“Yeah. You know, their processors.”

Since processors were made of gallium arsenide and other more exotic materials Jenkins was as completely in the dark as he was before he asked the question. But he decided not to pursue it.

“Well, get started Mr. Toyoda, and keep me posted.”

Billy grinned and mimed a salute. “Aye, aye, Captain, sir.” He flipped neatly and kicked off a console to dive for the door.

Jenkins watched him go distastefully.

“I just hope that little punk is as good as he thinks he is.”

“No one’s that good,” Iron Alice told him. “But he’s very good.”

Jenkins just shook his head.

###

The first part, the easy part, was to translate the signal. The optical channel was pretty well out. The aliens’ frequencies were too different from the ones the humans used and there was no easy way to convert the equipment.

That left radio-frequency communications. By responding in the rf band to every laser signal, the humans were able to get the aliens to respond on a mutually satisfactory frequency. The aliens used a very complex, sophisticated encoding scheme to pack the maximum amount of information into their radio beams. But it was still child’s play for the Maxwell’s computers to determine the scheme and the basic protocol involved. With that information it was the work of only a few hours to translate the signal into audio and video components on the human’s equipment.

Jenkins was on the bridge when Billy Toyoda called him.

“Captain, we’ve got video from the aliens,” the computerman said.

“What is it?”

“Dunno. But we’ve got the signal. You can put it up on your screen if you want. Channel 614.”

Jenkins nodded and punched up the image. He expected a diagram or perhaps writing. Instead he found himself staring into a pair of unblinking yellow eyes.

Owls! thought Captain Jenkins when he saw his first alien.

It was illusion, of course. From the front, the great staring yellow eyes and the hooked beak looked owl-like. The downy gray body covering, something between feathers and fur, accentuated the effect. But when the creature moved its head and Jenkins saw it in profile, the illusion was lost. The beak was real enough, but it was the end of a short muzzle.

Jenkins looked down at Billy’s image in the corner of his screen. “Is that a live picture?” he asked sharply.

“I think so.”

“How fast can you encode a video signal and beam it out?”

“Few minutes.”

“Then do it. Apparently they expect to look at the people they talk to.”

###

Once the video channel was established, the real work began. The principle was simple. Take a black box, human or electronic, it doesn’t matter. Now give it inputs and compare each output with the desired output for that input. Next introduce a correcting signal proportional to the difference between the desired and actual outputs. Correct the output. Now repeat the process, over and over and over again until the output is sufficiently close to the desired output. Next you move on to a new input/output pattern and repeat the process.

If the black box is a human you call this “teaching,” or perhaps “operant conditioning.” If the box is a computer it becomes “boltzman programming” or one of a half-dozen or so similar terms. Either way, eventually the system learns to match up inputs and outputs.

The principle may be easy, but the process is not simple. Billy Toyoda became red eyed and haggard overseeing the computers, guiding them and easing them out of local minima and trying to find appropriate strategies for altering the “weights” of the connections to produce the most accurate translations in the least time.

###

First came the easy things. Numbers, mathematical operations, basic logical operations. The computers handled that part pretty much on their own, although Billy hovered over them in cyberspace like a broody hen.

Then they moved on to the harder parts, the more human parts. First came the concepts of verb tenses. This thing happens now. This thing happened in the past. This thing is a continuing process which stretches from the then to the now and on to the future. This thing was a continuing process which was started and finished in the past. This thing is a continuing process which will start and finish sometime in the future.

Even with the computers to help, it was difficult. The verb tenses did not match, but then they seldom do. The aliens’ concept of “now” had more in common with the physicist’s notion of simultaneity than with the English present tense. Even the distinction between “I” and “those like me” was blurred by human standards.

Father Simon was invaluable for the work. He had no formal linguistic training but he was patient and possessed a keen analytical sense. He was however, only one of a small, constantly shifting group that worked on turning the sounds and images into a comprehensible language. Somehow—part aptitude, part common agreement—the priest was the human who appeared before the cameras.

The aliens took a somewhat different approach. Four or five of the habitats sent signals to the Maxwell, with different teams of aliens working at each one. Only one habitat seemed to use the same speaker every time. It was obvious that the aliens were monitoring each other’s transmissions and perhaps exchanging information because a word or concept learned by one seemed to be instantly known to all the others.

The diversity had its advantages, but it placed a cruel load on the priest. Father Simon worked at the screen for hours at a time, gesturing, speaking, listening patiently and consulting with Billy Toyoda to improve the translation software.

Beyond the mechanics of translating the words, the software was vital. There was no way humans and aliens would ever speak each other’s language unaided. Beaks could not be used like lips to shape sounds, and humans lacked the aliens’ resonating chambers in the muzzle. A large part of the alien language was gestural. Posture and movement were critical to interpretation and some “words” would have required a human contortionist.

Sometimes, in spite of computers and beings on both sides working themselves to exhaustion, the results weren’t quite what was expected.

###

Father Simon studied the alien on the screen carefully. This was the one who always appeared for his habitat, he knew, and there was an indefinable something else about him, something that set him apart. Now they were to the point where they could start exchanging referents. Perhaps the source of that difference would emerge there.

The priest pointed at himself. “Simon,” he said, pronouncing the word carefully.

The alien tapped himself on the beak and his mouth moved. There was a pause while the computer searched through its data base for the word or phrase that most nearly conveyed the same meaning. Since the word was presumably a name, the program had unusual latitude to seek even non-English words if they matched more precisely.

“Der Fuhrer,” the computer announced.

Father Simon started. Well, if that’s the translation of the being’s name . . .

“Der Fuhrer,” he repeated, pointing at the screen.

###

Gradually, both sides built up their store of concepts until they could begin to discuss substantive issues, even fairly abstract ones.

“What do you call yourselves?” Father Simon asked the alien on the screen.

The literal answer was something like “the descendants of those who chose to live in space.” The computer boiled it down to one word.

“Colonists,” the image on the screen said.

“Where are you from?”

The great yellow eyes regarded him without blinking. “Another star. Thousands of cycles ago our great Branch arrived here.”

“In a ship like ours?”

Again the unblinking stare. “Not like yours. Bigger. Much bigger.”

“Ah, yes,” Father Simon said. The alien’s stare was making him nervous. “Do you have ships like ours?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me, it was just that since we came we have not detected any faster-than-light ships in the system.” The alien showed signs of agitation. “I do not mean to pry,” the priest added hastily.

“Why have you come here?” the alien asked.

“We came looking for knowledge,” Father Simon told him. “At first astronomy—star knowledge—then when we found out the system was inhabited, we wished to learn about you.”

There was a pause while the computers at both ends of the link translated what the priest had said. Then the alien’s mouth moved.

“Knowledge is good,” the alien said. “Do you offer knowledge in return?”

“Yes, we would offer knowledge in return.”

“Knowledge of your . . .” the words stopped and there was a long pause while the computers went looking for the correct meaning “. . . thing that moves between stars?”

“Our star drive?” Another long pause while the computers conferred.

“Yes, the star drive.”

Father Simon frowned. “I thought you had faster-than-light travel.”

“Yes.”

“Then why do you want to trade for that?”

The alien froze and suddenly the screen went blank.

“What in the world . . .” Father Simon checked the link. It was intact, meaning the alien had deliberately shut off transmission. Then just as suddenly the screen cleared and there was the alien again. Or rather, Father Simon corrected himself, an alien. Looking closely, he didn’t think it was the same one.

“A problem,” the alien said. “Sorry.”

“Quite all right,” the priest said, nonplused by the jack-in-the-box routine. “Ah, I had asked about the star drive.”

“We have a star drive.”

“Then why do you want to trade for ours?”

The alien’s mouth moved for a long time before the computer spoke.

“Knowledge is good. Knowledge is always good.”

Father Simon frowned. Obviously, he wasn’t getting the full meaning of what the alien had just said. That was one of the problems with the programs at this early stage. He didn’t suspect that he had just missed an elaborate equivocation because of the imperfect translating software.

“Knowledge is good,” Father Simon agreed. “But you do not keep starships in this system?”

Again a long answer and a long pause for translation.

“We know of starships.”

“Yet there aren’t any coming and going here?”

“Sometimes.”

“But not while we have been here. We would have detected them.”

“You cannot detect a starship until it makes its presence known.”

“That’s not . . .” Father Simon stopped, his mouth hanging open. “It isn’t the same kind of drive, is it?”

“It is faster-than-light travel.”

“But not our kind. That burst of RFI is characteristic and inherent in the drive. If you knew about our drive, you would have known about that.”

“We have faster-than-light drive,” the Colonist repeated, obviously agitated.

“But not like ours?” Father Simon pressed.

The alien hesitated. “No,” he said finally. “Not like yours.”

“How is it different?”

“Many ways.”

“It’s not as good, is it?” Father Simon asked shrewdly. “It doesn’t work as well. Otherwise you wouldn’t try to hide it.”

The screen went blank.

“Well, that’s a confirmation of a sort,” the priest said to the blank screen. Then he punched up a second frequency.

###

The Ship’s Council met in one of the large conference rooms down on the A deck—the part of Spin furthest out from the core with the highest gravity and hence the most desirable part of the ship.

Affectation, Peter Carlotti thought, looking out over the empty seats. The room was big enough to hold nearly a hundred people, but aside from the members of the Council only Sharon Dolan and Father Simon were present. Anyone else who was interested was tuned in on a screen. He sighed inwardly, turned his attention back to the Council meeting and waited for the others to pounce.

The meeting had droned through twenty minutes or so of routine business and Carlotti’s report was the next item on the agenda. He didn’t expect it to be routine at all.

“And the next item is the report from the contact committee,” Aubrey said. “Dr. Carlotti?”

“There’s not a lot to report,” Carlotti told his fellow Council members. “We’re making significant progress, but it’s slow work.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Carlotti,” MacNamara interrupted, “but I’d like to know when we will be able to talk to the aliens.”

There was a murmur of assent from the rest of the Council.

“I wish I could give you a definite time frame, Doctor, but it’s not easy. There is still a great deal we do not understand about the aliens’ language, and communication is painful and full of difficulties.”

“But we can communicate?” MacNamara asked. “We can start actually talking to them?”

“We communicate, but only on a very elementary level. That’s one problem.” He took a breath. Here it comes. “The other problem is that so far the software is only trained on Father Simon.”

“You mean Father Simon is the only one who can talk to the aliens?”

“Right now, yes. To speed things up we didn’t attempt to train the computer on other human voices.”

“Dr. Carlotti, we have been in communication with the aliens for nearly four weeks,” MacNamara said. “There are nearly two hundred scientists on this ship who are eager to start learning from them. But so far Father Simon is the only one who has spoken to them and except for their language we have learned nothing from them.”

Carlotti hesitated. “We have found out one other thing. They don’t have our star drive.”

“What?” Aubrey interrupted. “They haven’t told us that.”

The astronomer shrugged. “I don’t think they intended to. It slipped out when they were talking to Father Simon. Or he deduced it rather, and forced it out of them. He is amazing.” Father Simon looked uncomfortable.

“But no star drive . . .”

“Oh, they know of a star drive, but it isn’t ours. It is a lot clumsier, apparently, and a lot more expensive to use. Also their ships have to be huge. The one called Derfuhrer says their starships are nearly as big as one of their colonies.”

“Well, if you have to move a lot of people to start a colony . . .”

“I said they know of a star drive, I didn’t say they use it.”

“How do they move?”

“Generation ships.”

“You mean they take hundreds of years to travel from system to system?”

Carlotti shrugged. “It apparently suits them. They live their entire lives in artificial structures, so it doesn’t matter much whether the structure is in orbit or moving through interstellar space.”

“They’re cut off then. One star system from another.”

“Physically, yes. But they seem to maintain communications with other solar systems by laser. I gather that travel doesn’t count for much with them. Even within this system most of their contact is electronic. Not many of them have seen more than one colony.”

“Makes sense of a sort,” DeLorenzo said. “The energy cost of moving from one colony to another isn’t negligible. They aren’t in orbits around planets, most of them, so they can’t do the kind of gravity well maneuvers we use so much.” He smiled. “Planets are handy things to have around, even if you don’t live on them.”

“But they did originate on a planet somewhere?”

“Oh, yes,” Carlotti said.

“From what I’ve seen, I’d deduce the Colonists’ home system was a dwarf, possibly a high M,” Sharon put in.

“Their planet was probably close to it and it was almost certainly smaller than Earth.”

“How do you know that?”

“I don’t know it, but it’s a good guess. The kind of light they prefer tells us something about the sun they evolved under. They keep their habitats at about one-third earth normal, although I suspect that may be less than the gravity on their home planet. Their air is thinner and colder than ours. There are a number of other things too.” She sighed. “It must have been a very atypical system to allow life to evolve.”

“Where is their home planet?” someone else asked.

“They’re unclear on that,” Father Simon said. “I suspect they simply don’t know.”

“Or they won’t tell us for security reasons,” DeLorenzo put in.

“No, I honestly don’t think they know. They settled this system from another where they lived in orbiting habitats and they settled that one from another where they did the same. They have been doing this for a long, long time.”

“How long?” someone asked uneasily.

Father Simon shrugged. “Again, that is unclear. Certainly for thousands of years and perhaps for hundreds of thousands of years.”

There was dead silence all down the table.

“They are a very old civilization,” Father Simon added half-apologetically.

###

Sharon Dolan caught up with the priest after the meeting broke up.

“I still can’t believe it,” she said by way of starting a conversation. “Even now, I just can’t believe it.”

“It is remarkable,” Father Simon agreed.

“It’s so mind boggling and it goes off in so many ways. Do you realize we’ve also found the answer to the Fermi Paradox?”

“You mean ‘Where are the intelligent aliens’?” Father Simon asked. “Why here, of course.”

“No, no I mean why we never found them before, or why they never found us.”

“That is a question,” the priest said. “Especially considering how widespread their civilization must be.”

“Yes, but we were looking at it from the wrong perspective, a planetbound perspective. These aliens don’t need planets. Do you know that except for some mining outposts on the surfaces of the larger moons of the gas giants there isn’t a single settlement anywhere on a planet in this system? It’s all space habitats.”

“And that has kept us from finding them?”

“Or them from finding us. Part of the Fermi Paradox was that we had calculated that even a slow rate of expansion at sublight speeds would send a culture to all the habitable planets in the galaxy in a galactic eye blink. But because we were thinking in terms of planets, our ‘slow’ expansion was much too fast. These aliens almost never have to go further than the next star to find suitable habitation. They don’t bother looking for Earthlike planets—or whatever their equivalent might be. They just colonize in orbit.

“More than that, because they exploit the entire resources of a solar system, not just the planets, a single system can support many more of them without crowding than it could if they were planetbound.”

“So they spread slower and they have less incentive to colonize,” Father Simon said. “I see. And since we’re the farthest out any human expedition has ever gone, we have finally run into them.”

“Farthest out and in the right direction.” Sharon agreed. “Precisely. And when you realize that they communicate within the system by lasers and over interstellar distances by very tight beam you can see why we never found radio emissions.”

“So we may have been neighbors for centuries and never known it. Remarkable.”

“It is remarkable,” Sharon agreed. Then her face clouded. “The question now is what do we do with our new neighbors?”

###

The steps stretched up before him, growing steeper as he climbed the end wall of the great cylinder. There were no transport lines reaching up to the Citadel. It had to be approached on foot, like a supplicant coming within the sacred precincts of a temple.

In some of the less advanced colonies, the Citadel was a temple. Their rulers claimed divine rights by virtue of their exalted position under Heaven. In 246, The Leader merely claimed to rule as the living embodiment of the will of the entire lineage. There was no longer a religious aspect to the Citadel. But neither was there a transit line.

Gravity lessened as he climbed, but it did not go to zero. The entire group of cylinders spun around a common central axis. This meant that not all the surface area inside each cylinder was habitable, but there were compensating advantages.

He looked up. Between the great windows running the length of the cylinder that admitted light from the central shaft, were dense mats of green. This close the Master of Forests could see workers suspended in harnesses moving among the hanging gardens, harvesting the vine crops and tending the plants. Production was up again, he thought approvingly. That will be something to tell The Leader if he asks.

He ascended to the terrace that ringed the Citadel and swept across it, past the guards and through the great open doors of the airlock. One of the functions of the Citadel was to protect its inhabitants even if the cylinder lost atmosphere in some barely imaginable catastrophe.

There were others there, the Master of Forests saw. The Masters who counted for most in the colony. The Master of Bounds, who dealt with relations with other colonies; the Master of Skies, who handled space transportation and engineering; the Master of Seas, who regulated the colony’s water and climate; the Master of Makers, who handled manufacturing and some parts of trade. As Master of Forests his concern was food and agricultural production.

The summons had said nothing about any others, but then The Leader’s summonses never did.

So it was to be one of those sessions, he thought. The Leader never gathered them to ask advice and seldom to issue orders. For those he saw them separately, often dealing by screen. The only time he talked to his subordinates in a group was to set out some new policy.

The Master of Forests felt a tingle of apprehension. What new plan did their leader have to announce to them now. He could see the others felt it too. The Master of Cities and the Master of Bounds seemed the most nervous. Were they privy to The Leader’s new policy? Or were they its victims?

An inner door opened and the Master of Masters, the head of his lineage, swept in. He moved with the too-springy stride of someone who had spent his formative years under the colony’s maximum gravity rather than the easy glide of one who was born to the Citadel. But there was power in his walk. He seemed to radiate an elemental force, unstoppable and unquenchable.

“We have come a great distance,” The Leader began. “When we started we were weak, disorganized and no one would have given us a chance to ascend to the Inner Grove.

“And yet, my brothers, here we are today.” He gestured expansively.

The Leader’s voice was not clear and pure as a herdmaster’s was supposed to be. Nor did it have the strength to carry great distances. A human listening through alien ears might have described it as “hoarse” or “reedy.” That did not matter. In a manner unmatched by any other elder in any colony, The Leader could catch and hold his listeners.

As we are all fliers fluttering in his net, the Master of Forests thought.

“Now Heaven offers us a new opportunity. A new species has entered our system in a faster-than-light ship of unknown and vastly superior design. It is less than one-twentieth the size of the faster-than-light ships we know.

“That ship is the key to 246 reclaiming her rightful place under heaven. I mean to seize it for our lineage.”

The Master of Forests went cold. Here was audacity indeed! This meant a direct confrontation with the Colonial Council and every other colony in the system. But The Leader kept speaking, as if what he had just proposed was a routine bit of business.

“With it we shall be great as no lineage has been before us. It is my unshakable desire that we shall learn the principles of this new alien drive before any other colony.”

“Perhaps easier said than done,” demurred the Master of Bounds, the lone member of the group who had not risen to position with The Leader.

“But it will be done! We will do it because it is my will that we do it. And our will is greater than that of any other lineage.”

He stopped and looked over the group.

“I do not claim this as special virtue for myself,” he said more softly. “I am the representative of the collective will of our lineage; a pawn, a puppet to be moved hither and yon as Heaven commands.

“And it is the Right Order of Heaven that our lineage be returned to its proper place. That the bonds placed upon us by our oppressors be loosened. To this end I have unshakably dedicated my life.”

He stopped his pacing and struck a heroic pose, a herd guardian looking out over the forest for signs of danger.

Not for the first time the Master of Forests wondered how much of this his leader actually believed.

“We know what the policy of the so-called Colonial Council will be. They will attempt to monopolize this thing as another prop to their illegitimate grip on the system. They will strive mightily to deny us the fruits of our rightful place in hierarchy of lineages.

The Leader relaxed and swept his gaze over the assembled group. Then his beak clacked like a gunshot and all his subordinates flinched away.

“No,” he bellowed. “It shall not be. They may plot and they may scheme. But we shall act. We shall smash their plots. We shall seize what is rightfully ours. We shall not be denied!”

He turned to the Master of Bounds. “Open negotiations for the star drive at once with the visitors.”

“The Council will forbid it.”

“The Council cannot forbid what they do not know. I said begin negotiations, not ask the Council’s permission. The Council has not yet decided upon a policy so we are not in violation. That makes it easier. Now at once!” The minister craned his neck submissively and bounded from the room.

“We stand on the threshold of a great new era, my friends. All that we need is the will to seize it.”

###

Father Simon and Sukihara Takiuji were playing go in the Cypress Lounge. Or more correctly, Suki was demonstrating a point.

“From here, this is joseki,” the Japanese said, laying down black and white stones in alternate order. “It builds strength to the outside.” He scooped up most of the stones and laid them down in another pattern. “This is also joseki, but it emphasizes the side of the board.”

Father Simon nodded and looked up from the board. Three of the walls showed a misty swamp with trees hung with moss looming out of the oily black water. A heron preened itself in a “nearby” tree, startlingly white against the gray mist. There was no sound, but then the picture didn’t call for any.

“A joseki is a gambit, correct?” Father Simon asked.

“Much like a chess gambit, yes. But there are many, many more of them. More possible combinations than chess, you see?”

Father Simon shook his head. “I don’t see how you remember them all.”

Suki considered. Behind the Japanese, the image of the heron took flight. “You remember them when the time comes,” he said at last. “The context of the game reminds you.”

“Gentlemen,” said a familiar voice behind them, “may I join you?” They looked up to see Andrew Aubrey.

“Please, sit down,” Father Simon said and Suki nodded amiably.

“I’m glad I found you both together,” Aubrey said briskly. “I need your help.”

“What’s the problem?”

“More an opportunity than a problem.” He turned to the priest. “Father, the Ship’s Council needs to work out details for trading the KOH drive to the aliens in return for their knowledge—assuming of course that they really don’t have it. Since you’re the only one who can speak to them yet and since Dr. Takiuji knows more about the drive than anyone on board, naturally we will need your assistance.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Father Simon asked.

“Wise?” Aubrey sounded surprised by the question. “We can learn an enormous amount from the aliens and I gather they want knowledge of our drive very badly.”

“Yes, but are we authorized to do anything of the sort? And is it in our best interests to do it?”

“As to authorization, naturally it would be better to consult with Earth. But Earth is months away. Sometimes the people on the spot have to make the decision.

“And as to our best interests, isn’t it in our best interest to establish friendly relations with these people?”

“What does the captain think of this?”

“This really isn’t the captain’s decision. It is a decision to be made by all of us, acting consensually.”

The heron was back, Father Simon noticed, sitting motionless on a moss-draped snag barely out of the water with its head cocked to one side.

“I don’t think we can form an intelligent opinion at this time,” Father Simon told him. “I think we at least need to know more before we start thinking about making a trade.”

“You say they want to trade,” Suki said diffidently. “How do we know what they will offer us?”

“A great deal,” Aubrey said. “I gather they want the drive badly.”

“But one person’s ‘great deal’ is sometimes very little to another person.”

“You sound as if you doubt their sincerity,” Aubrey said.

The Japanese looked down at the loose formation of stones on the go board. “I believe they are very sincere. But perhaps it is better to go slowly and avoid any possible misunderstanding.”

“Delay or outright refusal could also provoke misunderstanding,” Aubrey pointed out. “They might even think we mistrust them.”

The heron’s yellow beak flashed down, striking the water with a soundless splash. The bird jerked its head back with a fish flapping in its beak. With a practiced toss of its head, the heron started the still-wiggling fish down its gullet.

“It is a very difficult question,” Suki agreed. “But since we can barely understand each other, misunderstandings now are very possible, eh? Maybe in a little bit we can make sure of understanding.” He began picking up the stones and putting them back in their bowls. “Besides, it would be difficult to make such a trade with just the information we have here. It is incomplete. Completing it would be very time-consuming.”

Aubrey knew when to beat a tactical retreat. “You are the expert on that, of course, Dr. Takiuji,” he said. “I suppose we will have the opportunity to learn more about the aliens before we make a decision.” He smiled winningly. “I would appreciate if you gentlemen would think about this over the next few days. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .” He got up and left the table.

“It is something to think about,” Father Simon said after Aubrey had left the lounge.

“Perhaps it is also something to tell the captain about,” Sukihara Takiuji said, replacing the last of the stones in the bowls. “It may be that he does not know what Dr. Aubrey is thinking.”

Behind him the heron flapped off into the mist.

###

The Pine Lounge was busy that night. The whole ship was buzzing like a hive of disturbed bees with the latest discoveries, so naturally the lounge was packed.

At the large center table Father Simon was hemmed in by nearly two dozen people who wanted to hear the latest report straight from him.

“Father, do you mean that we have discovered something that these aliens, whose civilization is ten times as old as ours have not?”

Father Simon shrugged apologetically. “It appears so.”

“But how can that be?” the questioner persisted.

“Easy,” Ludenemeyer spoke up from further down the table. “Our drive is not intuitive.”

“Well, not to humans, perhaps . . .” the other began.

“Not to anybody,” Ludenemeyer cut in. “At least not to anyone sane.”

“But there are many different ways of describing the universe; surely in some of them it is obvious.”

“Not if they’re sane. Look, Dr. Takiuji could probably explain all this better, but let me take a stab at it.

“The KOH drive only makes sense if you look at the universe in a pretty damn peculiar way. And if you look at the universe that way, almost nothing else makes sense, if you follow me. In the math that best describes the drive, a simple vector is damn near indescribable and indeterminate when you do describe it. You can construct a mathematical system like that, but unless you know about the drive it is useless.”

“Oh, come now,” MacNamara protested from the edge of the group. “Hawking suggested the foundation for the KOH drive nearly a century ago.”

“That’s the myth created by popularizers,” Ludenemeyer retorted. “There is some stuff in Hawking’s later work that sort of touches on the drive, but Hawking was as wrong as Einstein about it. Hawking was such a romantic figure—the Crippled Giant and all that—that those hints got picked up and turned into the precursor of Kerensky’s and Omo’s work. That’s why we call it the Kerensky-Omo-Hawking drive. But Hawking didn’t invent it.

“And the problem’s worse than that,” he went on. “Even if you think in Kerensky Spaces and Hawking Attractors, the drive is still hard to pin down. You have to make just the right choices and you need the right technologies to prove it out. Do it wrong and you don’t even get an interesting explosion. The drive just sits there and puts out a lot of heat.”

He grinned. “And once you figure out the drive, you need to take it pretty far out from your sun. Someplace where the geodesies are—ah—nice and ‘flat’ to run your first tests.”

He took a pull on his stein of beer. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t think they had our incentives to find an efficient star drive. That’s Dr. Dolan’s theory anyway.”

“That’s an odd thing to say about a star-faring culture,” Carlotti put in.

“Not as odd as it sounds,” Ludenemeyer said. “I gather they spread from star to the next nearest star and they don’t much care about spectral type.

“With their culture they don’t need habitable planets and within broad limits one solar system’s pretty much as good as another to them. I doubt they go as much as ten light-years in a hop and in this part of the galaxy, stars are only an average of three lightyears or so apart.

“We never thought of that. We went into space looking for habitable planets—new Earths. We had to have something that would let us travel fast between stars, so we looked and looked until we found it. They simply went from star to star, so they could settle for something less.

“It’s more than that. The physics underlying the KOH drive are extremely subtle, indeed counterintuitive. The formalism that expresses the possibility is damn clumsy for expressing the normal range of physical phenomena.”

One of the other scientists grinned. “What he’s saying is it’s not the sort of thing you stumble across by accident. You got to go looking for it and then there’s a lot of luck in finding it.”

“And they don’t have a KOH drive?”

“Not at all.”

“It is a remarkable situation,” Father Simon said.

“I imagine we will find many more remarkable things as we learn more about them,” MacNamara said. “Or whenever the rest of us can talk to them.”

“That’s being worked on right now,” Father Simon assured him. “The computer crew is retraining the translation programs now.”

###

At the same time, Aubrey was having a very uncomfortable interview with the captain.

“Dr. Aubrey,” Jenkins said for the third time. “I don’t want anything more said about the drive, at least until we know where we stand.”

“Captain, it is not really your decision.”

“Doctor, everything that bears on the safety and welfare of this ship is my decision and m my opinion the details of the drive definitely do.”

“You’re arrogating a great deal to yourself, Captain.”

“I’m trying to protect my ship in a difficult and possibly dangerous situation.”

“So the stranger is the enemy,” Aubrey said bitterly. “Haven’t we had enough of that attitude? Hasn’t it cost us enough?”

“Dr. Aubrey, I am not assuming anything of the sort,” Jenkins said, stung. “It seems to me you are the one who is taking a great deal on yourself.”

“The Ship’s Council is the focus of decision making for everyone on this ship.”

“The Ship’s Council has not discussed this matter,” Jenkins retorted. “Until it agrees on a course of action you are acting unilaterally. And if it agrees, I still must decide to go along.”

Aubrey smiled. “What do you propose to do, Captain? Censor every man and woman on this ship?”

“I propose to exercise my prerogative and take the ship out of here immediately if I do not like the trend of events,” Jenkins snapped back. “We can argue about it later and you can present information at my court martial if you like. But until that time, neither you nor anyone else will discuss details of the drive with the aliens.”

###

A throwback! Andrew Aubrey fumed. A twentieth-century throwback in command of this of all expeditions. He stalked the corridor alone, trying to work off some of the blind rage. He had known the captain was difficult, and wedded to the archaic methods of the Space Force, but this . . .

He was so angry and so wrapped in his own thoughts he nearly knocked Sharon Dolan down when she came around a corner.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Dolan,” he said, recovering. “I didn’t see you.”

“Are you all right, Dr. Aubrey?”

He let his breath out in a long sigh. “Yes, I’m all right. I just had a rather—unsatisfactory—interview with the captain.”

“About the aliens and the drive?”

Aubrey chuckled with brittleness. “News does travel, doesn’t it?”

“Well, no. Just that everyone knows you want to give the principles of the drive to the aliens. What else could you be talking to the captain about?” She paused. “I take it he didn’t agree?”

“No. He actually threatened to jump us out of the system if we tried to reveal the drive. Subconsciously, Captain Jenkins still confuses the stranger with the enemy.”

“I don’t believe that!” Sharon said, more sharply than she meant to.

“I think it’s true nonetheless. Oh, I can understand it to an extent. They are frightful looking enough. But Dr. Dolan, we can’t afford that kind of thinking! Fear of the alien almost destroyed us when the alien was nothing more than a human who didn’t think exactly as we did. We can’t afford another war, ever.”

“I know,” Sharon told him. “My family is Irish.”

No one knew who started it and there were almost as many reasons why as there were scholars studying it. The important thing was that as the twenty-first century dawned, the United States and the Soviet Union fought a brief, futile and suicidal nuclear war.

Compared to what could have been, it wasn’t much of a war. Both sides had spent nearly two decades building defenses against nuclear-armed missiles. Neither nation’s missile defense system was perfect, but they both worked. The Americans stopped nearly ninety-nine percent of the warheads aimed at their territory and the Soviets somewhat less, perhaps ninety-five percent.

As a result only about four hundred million people died worldwide.

Most of Europe and vast tracts of North America and Eurasia were turned into blasted ruins and the economic and political face of the planet was turned upside down. But by the skin of its teeth humanity survived.

Technically, you could say that the United States won. After all, the United States of America still existed—or rather a country bearing that name and with more-or-less the same territory still existed. The Soviet Union had dissolved into a welter of competing republics. The European Community existed only as a pale shadow. But a twentieth-century American would have had a hard time seeing his country in what now called itself the “USA.”

Aubrey grinned without humor. “Do you know how I spent my weekends in high school? I was a ghoul.”

“A ghoul?”

“I grew up in upstate New York, in one of the safe zones. Right after the war there was a refugee camp there. Tens of thousands of people packed in from New York City, Rochester, Buffalo, all over.”

He licked his lips. “Well, nearly all of them died, of course. You know how it was, no food, no medicine, radiation poisoning, disease—plus the winters. They have terrible winters there.” He sighed and hurried on. “Anyway, they died and were buried in mass graves. Row after row of trenches, hacked out by hand because they couldn’t afford to use a bulldozer and the bodies dumped in without coffins or shrouds and then they’d mound the earth over them. Forty years later and those mounds were still two or three feet high.”

“I know,” Sharon whispered. “I’ve seen the like.”

Aubrey took another deep breath. “Well, that was fine at the time, but the land where the camp stood was good farmland. As the population built back up they saw they couldn’t let it lie fallow. Besides, they thought that even after all that time the bodies were contaminating the water. We had a lot of sickness in the summertime. So the remains of the camp, including the graves, had to go.”

“And you . . .”

Again the drawn, deathshead grin. “I got the job. I was away at school during the winter so I didn’t have regular employment. So I was thrown into the labor pool with all the drunks and bums they could corral and that was our job for two summers.

“We went out there with shovels and picks and opened the mounds and turned the soil, sifting out every bone we could find, ignoring the stench as best we could, and piling all of them up for hauling and disposal.”

He paused. “I was luckier than some. I never got sick. But I would get back to camp and I would wash and wash and wash until my skin was raw and I could still smell the death on me.”

Aubrey looked as if he would throw up. Then he took another deep, shuddering breath and turned back to Sharon, apparently the old Andrew Aubrey again.

“Anyway, that’s when I decided that we had to change or it would be all humanity in those pits the next time. I think we are changing, too. But now we’re at a critical point and we have to deal with someone who is still infected with the old ways of doing things.”

“Captain Jenkins is a reasonable man,” Sharon told him. “I’m sure you can reason with him.”

Aubrey relaxed. “Perhaps you’re right, Dr. Dolan.” Then he smiled. “Yes, I’m sure the captain will be reasonable when we have more evidence to convince him.”

###

One by one the screens lit up, showing the feces of the leaders of the most powerful colonies in the system. The meeting was not to exchange information, it was to decide what to do. They had all been monitoring negotiations with the aliens.

“We meet to seek common direction,” the Council President said after finishing the opening ritual. “There are strangers among us and we must decide how to deal with them. They are not of any known lineage,” he continued, knowing full well this was news to no one. “They are a new and undiscovered kind of being.

“Their ship is vastly smaller than any known faster-than-light craft. The aliens admit they have a drive which works on new principles, but they refuse to share it with us.”

“Then let us take it!” one of the smaller colonies trumpeted. “They are deep within our system.”

“They can also vanish in an instant,” the Council President retorted. “Since they discovered we do not have the drive, their ship is held constantly ready to leave. At the first suspicion of trouble they will disappear.”

“What is it they want?” asked the leader of the conservatives, the oldest member on the Council.

“That is unclear. They seem eager to trade knowledge with us, but they insist that they must refer matters back to the elders of their lineage. They will offer nothing of value.”

“Then why don’t they leave?” the elder snapped. “Why do they remain and cause dissension?”

The Council President made the equivalent of a shrug. “Apparently they hope to gain from us without giving us anything substantial in return.”

“Do they think us such weaklings?”

Again the shrug. “That, too, is unclear. Seemingly there is some uncertainty among their elders as to the proper course to pursue. They say that others will come after them who will be more willing to discuss their drive.” He made a dismissing motion, as if to brush off an insect. Long experience had taught the colonists that cultures which built starships seldom visited a system more than once. They collapsed too quickly.

“As long as they stay there is hope,” one of the other councilors observed. “Let us wait and watch.”

“There is one other cause for hope. They desire to communicate with us. If we talk to them perhaps we can resolve the uncertainty and gain what we want.”

###

Not altogether unsatisfactory, the Council President mused. The meeting had not gone badly at all. There had been the usual interminable wangling as the leaders of the factions squabbled and jockeyed for advantage. There had been the heightened tension of having a great prize dangled before them. But in the end the Colonial Council had agreed on a general course of action. The conservatives had stayed pretty much in line and even 246 had been less obstreperous than usual. All things considered, the Council President decided, it was more than he had hoped for.

The Council President’s screen lit up. There stood the leader of the conservative faction.

“A proposal,” the old one said without preamble.

“I will entertain it,” the Council President replied. By the All-Father, what now?

“We have taken counsel among ourselves. We desire to destroy the newcomer.”

The Council President’s beak snapped in response. “Unacceptable!”

“Hear what we offer,” the old one said.

“It is insufficient,” the Council President trumpeted. “No matter what it might be it is insufficient.”

“These—things—are dangerous,” the old one said. “They threaten the stability of the entire system.”

“These ‘things’ are very powerful,” the Council President countered. “Can you be so sure we can destroy them?”

“They are merely young and crude.” The old one made a dismissive gesture. “There is only one small ship of them. An easy mark for a combined attack.”

“We know little about them.”

“We know enough. They can be destroyed and destroyed they must be.”

“Are you so certain we can learn their drive from the wreckage?”

Again the dismissive gesture. “Their drive is unimportant.”

The Council President blinked. “No one else thinks so.”

“Then they are blinded fools! The Order of Heaven is important and that must be preserved.”

“The consensus is that we can do both.”

“No!” The old one’s beak snapped. “We exist in a very tight orbit within many competing fields. Already we are threatened to be pulled from our course. We do not need another potential to further complicate our calculations.”

“New opportunities open up new orbits,” the Council President responded. “With the drive we could spread our lineages through the galaxy in our lifetimes. We would become the greatest Founders of all.”

“When blinded by the sun be very careful how you reach for the next branch,” the old one warned. “Already they produce dangerous strains. Consider 246’s action.”

The Council President repeated the old one’s dismissal. “246 is acting as always.”

“He broke the Covenants. He broke the Covenants and got away unpunished.”

“We should add new conflicts merely to punish an upstart for a technical violation?”

“His violations will not always be technical,” the old one warned. “And since you are so infatuated with these creatures’ star drive, consider what would happen if 246 were to obtain it.”

“246 will not obtain it. They are a weak lineage with deep obligations yet to be discharged.”

“Are they so weak as they were two hands of cycles ago?” the old one asked sharply. “With each cycle beneath the yoke of that madman they grow stronger. They build, they ignore their obligations and they grow.”

The Council President snorted. This was an old, tired argument. “246’s obligations are so heavy there is no hope of meeting them in the approved fashion.”

“Then let them suffer for their foolishness,” the old one retorted. “They attempted to upset the Order of Heaven and now they collect the consequences. Let them serve as an object lesson to all would-be rebels against Heaven.”

“You would drive them to desperation and to the unthinkable. It is our policy to defer their obligations and that is a settled matter.”

“It is your policy to let them grow so strong they can threaten us all.”

“It is my policy to maintain the Will of Heaven so long as the Mandate rests with me.”

“Or,” he asked shrewdly, “would you rather that all Colonies acted together to give 246 a generation ship and send its present leaders out to start a new founding?”

The oldster tossed his head in negation, the folds of flesh shaking from the violence of the gesture. “Why should we deprive our own lineages of the opportunity of our own Foundings merely to be rid of this upstart and outlaw?”

It was a rhetorical question, just as the Council President’s had been. Launching a generation ship to another star to Found a new system was enormously expensive even for the Colonial civilization. There was enormous prestige in being part of a Founding Branch, but also great risk and hardship and huge expense for the sponsoring Colony. True, launching a Founding was one of the civilization’s standard ways of averting open conflict between irredeemably opposed groups, but the primary expense was always borne by the sponsoring Colony.

“Very well, then,” the Council President said. “It is my policy—and the will of the Council—to gratefully accept the gifts that Heaven puts within our reach.”

“This is not a gift of Heaven. It is a snare that will set us one against the other and ultimately destroy us all.”

“So you wish to throw it away?”

The old one shrugged. “We have lived long and well without it. Why should we nurture a thing that threatens us?”

“This thing does not threaten us,” the Council President repeated. “It promises to enrich us. Your request is rejected.”

The other stared at him in challenge. “We will speak of this again in Council.”

“So we shall,” the Council President agreed.

Old fool, the Council President thought as the image disappeared from the screen. So mired in the past that he cannot see the future. He froze, considering the other’s possible moves and his countermoves.

The conservatives could not win on the issue of destroying the strangers. Even most of the conservative faction saw the value of this new drive. The threat was that the conservative faction would align against him on other issues, hoping to build a challenge that would topple him.

The Council President made a gesture like brushing off an annoying insect. Let them! The conservatives had never been among the core of his support. So long as he remained strong and the orbits of the Council did not perturb too greatly there was nothing to fear from them.

Still, the Council President thought, there was one truth in all that muck. When it fell, the aliens’ drive had to fall into the right hands. It could not be allowed in the hands of 246.

246 was a perpetual thorn in his side. An outlaw colony ruled by a madman. Who was outrageous and grew bolder with each passing cycle. An upstart. A rebel with only the most tenuous claim on his own lineage. Well, one day he would go too far and lose the Mandate of Heaven. His own people would deal with him then.

In the meantime, however, he had to be reckoned with.

###

The root of the trouble was that nearly a hundred cycles ago 246 had been led by a genuine lunatic.

246 had been one of the powers of the system, a first founding, a Great Branch of the One Tree of the parent lineage. It had dependencies and a web of mutual obligations that spread across the entire system and its voice echoed in the Council.

That a colony should fall from such an exalted state was part of the Natural Order of Heaven. But the way 246 had fallen was strange and inglorious in the extreme.

The leadership of the 246 lineage had fallen to one of great personal force and pronounced cultish leanings. For sake of a quasi-religious ideal he had attempted to turn an entire planet into a colony.

That such a thing was unheard of and clearly against the Order of Heaven mattered not at all to him and very little to his people. He determined that to honor his mad gods a planet should be made over into a place where people could live unaided. Even more incredibly, his people, rather than withdrawing his Mandate, went along with him.

For two lifetimes the people of 246 labored at their great work. Resources enough to build twenty colonies or to launch expeditions to two other stars were poured into 246’s dream.

Enormous mass drivers were built in the Jovian systems and huge chunks of water ice were hurled onto the surface of the planet. Settlements were established at the bottom of the planet’s gravity well, under pressure structures more massive than those surrounding a colony. Construction started on a vast system of mirrors to focus additional sunlight on the planet. Cultures were bred to transform and stabilize the planet’s atmosphere when it was finally generated.

And always the leader drove his people on with the vision of the paradise they would have on the surface of the planet. A place to stand and defy Heaven itself.

It was madness, of course. It was contrary to the collected wisdom of tens of thousands of cycles and thousands of Foundings. But the leader was mad and he infected his people with his madness. Under the incredulous eyes of the other colonies, 246 pushed ahead with its project. In the process it beggared itself and its future.

First 246 spent its available capital. Then it called in its accumulated rights and obligations with other colonies. Then, as the huge unproductive works dragged on for cycle after cycle, it mortgaged its future and placed itself under heavy obligations to other colonies to get the resources to feed its leader’s obsession.

Finally, inevitably, it all collapsed. The project was too great and the available resources were not enough. The old leader had spiraled slowly down into madness and senility. For a while his successor had attempted to carry on the project until he too was overwhelmed. In the end he lost the Mandate of Heaven and 246 emerged embittered and impoverished.

For perhaps another lifetime 246 alternated between periods of weak leadership and direct control of the Council as one or another of its obligations became overdue.

During these recurrent periods of chaos and foreign rule, the present leader had risen out of obscurity to take control of the Inner Grove. In the process he had swept away the old lineage leaders and changed the social structure of 246 forever.

There was a shred of legality for the leader’s position, the Council President admitted. Leadership of a lineage was a matter of limited election. Although the choice was normally made by the Elders of the Inner Grove, their authority rested on their claim to represent the entire lineage. It was theoretically possible for the lineage as a whole to instruct the elders as to who was an acceptable candidate. But in all the long recorded history of the race there were only a few times when that had been done and never before in this system.

But for the Council President, whose lineage was a Great Branch stretching back through Elders of the Inner Grove for three Foundings, Derfuhrer was an insolent upstart.

As a politician, Derfuhrer’s constant stream of complaints about how 246 had been stripped of its rightful position and his constant demands were more than annoying, they were dangerous.

Dangerous, but manageable. The Council President had even briefly allied with 246 to help tame the conservatives. Now he must be checked before he could expand his insolence even further.

Meanwhile, there were other alliances to consider and other demands to balance as each colony attempted to use its resources and obligations to take advantage of this new situation.

There are too many resonances, the Council President thought. Too many competing influences. The orbit is perturbed and its future path is beyond prediction.

And now this new thing, this shipload of strange creatures with their fantastic drive. What new perturbation would they bring with them, the Council President wondered. What price would they extract for their secret?

###

Andrew Aubrey stared into the Colonist’s eyes and tried to avoid looking at the great beak in front of them. This being is just as civilized as you are, he told himself sternly.

“Uh, you are one of the leaders of a colony?”

“I am,” Derfuhrer told him. Aubrey had asked to talk to one of the leaders and since Derfuhrer and the Council President were the only ones willing to spend time personally on screen with the humans, he ended up with Derfuhrer.

“I am interested in the way your society works.”

“It works very well,” Derfuhrer told him. “All join together harmoniously for the greater good.” He saw no point in mentioning the machinations of the illegitimate usurpers who made up the Colonial Council.

“How long has it been like this?”

“Thousands of cycles.”

“And you have been at peace all this time?” Aubrey asked, his excitement growing.

“We have always lived in harmony. It is the Way of Heaven.”

“But no war?”

Derfuhrer hesitated. What was this strange being asking him now? “Explain please.”

It took a long time for the translation to come back.

“War. Open hostility between lineages. Killing and destruction of colonies.”

Instinctively, Derfuhrer flinched. Open hostilities! Were these creatures truly mad?

“We do not do that,” he said at last.

“How . . . how long?”

Again the alien shrug gesture. “I do not know. Never in this system.”

“But when you have disputes, how do you settle them?”

“We talk. We trade. We strike balances. There are many ways.”

“Fantastic,” Dr. Andrew Aubrey breathed. No war! These people had no war. This was a race at peace for thousands of years.

###

There was an undercurrent of excitement running through the entire ship when the Ship’s Council met again. In the packed auditorium where the Council met, the air was almost electric.

All the seats had been taken long before the meeting was scheduled to begin and from engineering to the bridge nearly every screen on the Maxwell was tuned in on it. Most of the Council members were early as well. They whispered back and forth as they waited, sometimes gathering in huddles of two and three. At either end of the table sat the invited guests, Captain Jenkins, Ludenemeyer, Sharon Dolan, Father Simon and the others who had technical knowledge to offer.

At precisely the appointed hour Andrew Aubrey strode onto the stage, polished, trim and smooth as always, to rap the meeting to order.

“Since this is a special meeting of the Ship’s Council, we will dispense with the regular business and go straight to the heart of the matter. As you all know, we have to discuss trading information with the Colonists. Before we try to make policy, however, I think we need to understand what the advanced civilization of the Colonists has to offer.” He turned to Pete Carlotti. “Dr. Carlotti, I believe you have been talking to them about astronomical data.”

“Well, under the circumstances the aliens are unwilling to discuss theories,” Carlotti said. “But they have given us some notion of the scope of their observational astronomy. Gentlemen, ladies, the only word I can find for it is ‘breathtaking.’

“These people have astronomical records going back literally thousands of years. They include observations made from an area which must be hundreds of light-years across. It is an unbelievable treasure trove in both scientific and practical terms.

“I’m sure the scientific benefits are obvious to all of you. I will simply add to that with the aliens’ knowledge we could extend the range of our starships manyfold. I was shown samples of the data and from those samples I would estimate we would be able to navigate safely out to nearly a thousand light-years in at least some directions. The implications are stunning.”

“And what do they want in return?” DeLorenzo asked.

“Our own astronomical data, of course. And the details of our star drive.”

DeLorenzo muttered something in Spanish.

“I think we had best leave that until we have heard all the reports,” Aubrey said. “Dr. Dolan, I believe you had something?”

“There is even more than astronomical knowledge here,” Sharon said, almost breathless with excitement. “Dr. Aubrey mentioned how far ahead the Colonists are,” Dolan said. “There is another area where they are ahead of us. Space engineering. We don’t know how to build anything like those colonies.”

“They are enormous,” Carlotti agreed.

Sharon shook her head. “Size is the least of it. The impressive thing is that they are completely self-supporting and have been for thousands of years.” She looked up and down the table excitedly and her face fell at the lack of reaction.

“Let me summarize,” she said more dryly. “We supply about ninety-five percent of the needs of our space colonies from space resources. The rest represents material that has to be transported from Earth at enormous cost.

“This isn’t just a matter of making some things on Earth and not in space. There are a number of things that have to come from Earth because we cannot produce them in space. The classic example is that every so often we have to replace the seed stocks and cultures for our farms.

“These people don’t. They supply all their needs from space and they have been doing it effectively forever. Not only that, but they are much more efficient at managing their life-support systems. The implications of that alone are huge. Our colonies are limited because we have to have a fairly large amount of room for each colonist, far more than we really need to support him or her. All that extra air, space and biomass make an environmental flywheel effect. That makes it easier to manage the environment on the colonies, but it also makes our colonies very inefficient. These people have much finer control over their ecologies so they don’t need that flywheel. That fact alone makes their colonies much more productive than ours.

“The signs are everywhere. Their ships, their propulsion systems, the construction of their colonies. All of them far, far ahead of us and all perfectly adapted by thousands of years of life in space.

“If we can learn their technology we have the chance to leap millennia in just a few years. Our space populations can explode. We can even start exporting food from space back to Earth!”

That caused a stir, Sharon noted with satisfaction as she sat back down.

“I have a report I’d like to add,” Aubrey said, standing up. “We have heard about the Colonists’ scientific knowledge,” he nodded to Carlotti, “and about the practical skills they could teach us,” a nod to Sharon Dolan. “But there is something even more significant here.”

He paused dramatically. “The Colonists do not have war.”

“Huh? Are you sure?”

“I said war is totally unknown in their culture. They were horrified at the thought of violent conflict.”

“But surely they must have some disagreements,” Carlotti said.

“Of course, but they have perfected a system of handling them without resorting to violence.” He looked down the table. “Over thousands of years the Colonists have evolved a nearly perfect Sixth Wave society. They have moved beyond the age of Industrial Scarcity and Information-Age conflict into a post-Information-Age culture built on conflict resolution.

“Think about it,” Aubrey went on. “In the first place what do they have to fight over? The natural resources of the system are plentifully distributed and free for the taking. The Colonists haven’t begun to bump against their resource limits and since they control their populations carefully, it is doubtful they ever will.”

Jenkins thought about resource distribution and the energy cost of reaching them from various points in the habitable belt, but he kept silent.

“Beyond that, they have had to learn to live together. Those habitats are fragile. In the event of open hostilities it is all too probable that both parties would be destroyed. They have lived with that for thousands of years and they have learned to adapt to it.”

“Humans have had millions of years and we still haven’t learned how,” DeLorenzo put in skeptically.

Aubrey looked annoyed. “We have not lived in structures in space which could be easily damaged by missiles or even rocks. No, they are far, far ahead of us in the techniques of conflict resolution.

“If we can apply their lessons to our own society we can advance centuries in a single generation.

“Earlier someone said the potential here is enormous. It is more than that, it is nearly inconceivable in human terms. There has never been an event anywhere in human history fraught with such great potential for constructive human change!”

“Human change into what?” DeLorenzo snapped.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Since you’re harping on the Colonists’ long history, let me give you a quote from our own history: ‘beware of Greeks bearing gifts.’ We are sitting ducks for these people.”

“Just because we were fortunate enough to come across something they did not . . .” Aubrey began.

“Exactly. We’re damn lucky we’ve got one bargaining chip.”

DeLorenzo let out his breath in a gust of exasperation and ran his hand through his hair.

“Look, I said this in the beginning. The thing to do is to cut and run. Earth wants to negotiate with these people? Fine, let Earth send out a team of negotiators—and the armed force necessary to back them up.”

He looked up and down the group. “We aren’t authorized to conduct negotiations. We aren’t equipped to conduct negotiations. And we sure as hell are in no condition to defend ourselves if the negotiations go sour.”

“We are not conducting negotiations,” Aubrey said.

“No? What do you call it then? Earth has exactly one advantage in dealing with these aliens and that is the FTL drive. The only thing we can do here is blow that advantage by giving it away to them. It’s too damn dangerous for us to stick around.”

There was a muttering from the crowd.

“Captain,” Aubrey asked, “do you think it is too dangerous to stay?”

“Not if we keep the drive hot,” Jenkins said. DeLorenzo scowled at him. “But that’s not the same as saying we’re going to tell them how the drive works.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said we are not going to discuss the drive with them, Doctor. We do not have the authority.”

“You’re agreeing with Major DeLorenzo?” Aubrey said incredulously.

“Only to the extent that we are not empowered to give the Colonists the principles of the drive.” Again the audience muttered and Jenkins realized he had driven a wedge between himself and most of the people on the ship.

“Very well, Captain,” Aubrey said at last. “We all know you have the power to enforce that decision—at least while we are here.”

“Doctor,” Captain Jenkins replied, “my only concern is while we are here.”

###

The ship was still buzzing at dinner that evening. Characteristically, Billy Toyoda didn’t even notice. He barely noticed what was on his tray as he talked shop with one of the other computer crew.

“That’s heavy sand the Owlies have got,” Toyoda said for perhaps the sixth time since they had sat down. “There are some smart Owlie computer architects out there.”

Neither of them saw Andrew Aubrey come up behind them and stop short when he heard what Toyoda was saying.

“I really don’t think it is appropriate to call them ‘Owlies’,” Aubrey admonished. “It sounds derogatory.”

Billy turned to look up at the scientist. “So who cares? They never hear what we call them anymore than we hear what they call us. They probably call us something worse.”

“Calling them names promotes prejudice,” Aubrey said.

“That’s what everyone calls them.”

“The proper term is ‘Colonists.’ I’d appreciate it if you’d use it in the future.” He walked away from the table.

“You know that guy crottles my greeps,” Billy said as Aubrey moved out of earshot.

“Why?”

“He’s a control freak. He wants to run everyone and everything he comes in contact with.”

“That’s a funny thing to say about Mr. Consensual Management himself.”

Toyoda nodded. “That’s the other thing. That he’s not even honest about it.”

###

To the great relief of nearly everyone on the ship, including Jenkins, the Colonists were willing to continue talking even once they understood the secret of the drive was not up for trade. However, they had their own conditions.

“It would be best if we avoided contamination,” the Council President explained. “So we wish to limit physical contact between us.”

“Disease?” Aubrey said. “The possibility hadn’t occurred to me, but yes, I can understand your concern.”

The Council President froze. Physical illness between species? Are these things even more fragile than they appear? Or is the translator malfunctioning? Never mind. The creatures had agreed and that was the central point.

“With your permission we will establish a station near your ship where we may meet in safety and mutual comfort to discuss and to trade physical objects. Naturally we will keep you fully informed of all movements of ships and materials near your vessel.”

“Naturally,” Aubrey agreed.

“Now,” the Council President said, “I have another proposal for communication . . .”

###

“The Colonists have suggested that we limit our physical contacts to the greatest extent possible,” Aubrey told the next meeting of the Ship’s Council. “They are concerned about the possibility of disease.”

“Between species?” C.D. MacNamara asked. “But surely that is exaggerated.”

Captain Peter Jenkins considered it more than exaggerated, he thought it was insane. But he wasn’t in this “working session” of the Council, sitting at the foot of the table, to voice an opinion. He was here as a half-welcome guest because Aubrey had finally realized that the captain held effective veto power over dealing with the aliens. Like it or not, he needed to know what the captain thought before the Council established a policy.

“Perhaps,” Aubrey replied to MacNamara. “Perhaps not. They have much greater experience with these things than we do, after all. However in view of certain other concerns,” Aubrey glanced significantly at DeLorenzo, “it appears a reasonable suggestion.”

“How can we learn anything if they limit contact?” someone asked.

“The Colonists have also proposed free and open communication with us.”

“Just what does that mean?” DeLorenzo growled.

“It means, Major, that any of us can talk freely to them. They will open as many channels as we desire and make available as many of their people as we wish to speak to.”

“While they pump us dry?”

“Certain subjects will not be discussed, of course,” MacNamara said. “We have already agreed upon that.”

“And did any of the people doing the agreeing stop to consider the security risks?”

“We have already agreed not to discuss the drive or anything relating to it with them,” Aubrey said firmly.

“And what about the rest of it? What about the location of Earth?”

“That too, is not a subject for discussion.”

“Aubrey, do you know what the first principle of interrogation is? Get the subject talking. Talk about anything. The weather, soccer, anything, but get him talking. You do that and you’re halfway to finding out anything you want to know.”

“I very much doubt the aliens will be subjecting any of us to the third degree,” Aubrey said stiffly.

“Third degree, third degree,” DeLorenzo mimicked nasally. “Jesus Christ man, you don’t have the faintest damn idea of how an interrogation is conducted! Let me tell you something. I’ve done plenty of interrogations, and I never resorted to force.” Well, almost never, DeLorenzo admitted to himself. “I found out what I wanted to know, too. If you follow this idiotic policy, the aliens will have the secret of the drive and the location of Earth in six weeks.”

“Absurd,” MacNamara snapped.

“Is it, Doctor?” DeLorenzo’s smile was more like a snarl. “Do you know how pitifully easy it is to trick someone into saying more than they should?”

“Major, we are talking about scientific discussions here.”

“Remember how much the Soviets got from the West by ‘scientific discussions’?”

“Now really . . .”

“You know, you’re awfully damn eager to end up as someone else’s slaves,” DeLorenzo’s voice cut through Aubrey’s smoothly modulated tones.

“I beg your pardon!”

“Slaves,” DeLorenzo repeated firmly, looking up and down the table. “The whole human race. You’ve already heard that they’re centuries ahead of us. If they show up at Earth how do we stop them?”

“Slaves went out with the industrial revolution,” Carlotti said.

“Call them ‘colonies,’ or protectorates’ then.” DeLorenzo’s smile was ugly. “It puts a better face on it. But the result’s the same. Economic and cultural domination of Earth by these aliens.”

“Oh come now, Major,” Aubrey said patiently. “We have been all through this before. What conceivable reason could an advanced culture have for trying to dominate another culture?”

“I bet the Indians couldn’t figure out what Cortez hoped to get out of them either. The only thing that stands between us and slavery is the star drive. And now you want to put yourselves in a position where the aliens are sure to get it.” He shook his head. “Talk about selling someone the rope to hang you. You people want to give them the shackles to enslave you.”

“It never ceases to amaze me,” Aubrey said coldly, “how we read our own basest motives into those we mistrust.”

“And it never ceases to amaze me how some people confuse their rosy fantasies with reality. Man, these are aliens. We know nothing about them!”

“We know the Colonists are not guilty of genocide,” Aubrey shot back.

DeLorenzo went white. A single vein in his forehead throbbed. Without speaking he pushed back his chair, rose from the table and stalked from the room.

No one said anything until the door had closed behind him.

“Now,” Aubrey murmured, “if there are no logical objections . . .”

No one said anything.

“Of course,” Aubrey went on, “since this is a matter affecting the safety of the ship, the captain has the final say in the matter.” He turned toward Jenkins.

Jenkins cleared his throat. “If we are going to learn anything from these aliens we are going to have to talk to them. The more of us there are talking to them, the faster we can learn it.” And the sooner we can get out of here.

“Subject to the provision that nothing bearing on the drive, the location of Earth or certain other sensitive matters is discussed, I’ll support open communication with the aliens.”

Aubrey paused. Obviously, he hadn’t expected the captain to do more than rubber stamp the Council’s decision. “I suppose we all agree to that,” he said smoothly.

MacNamara and the other Council members nodded.

“All right then. It’s settled,” Aubrey said briskly. “How quickly can we have the channels open?”

“That depends on how fast we can get them set up and how long it takes to draw up a list of prohibited topics. I’ll want Dr. Takiuji’s advice on that.”

“I think a committee would be more appropriate,” Dr. Aubrey said.

“If Dr. Takiuji wants help I’m sure he will ask for it,” Jenkins said. “But he knows much more about the drive and what is likely to be sensitive than any of the rest of us.”

Aubrey turned that over for a minute. “All right. But we need to do this as quickly as possible.”

###

After the meeting broke up, Jenkins did not return to the bridge immediately. Instead he went to the North Bubble and swam over next to the port to float alone in an ocean of stars.

The star field was familiar but not identical. At one hundred light-years, there are differences. Shift a few light-years and you lose most of the G and K suns and all the M-type dwarfs. But the big bright stars, the O, A and B suns, still shine brightly in the sky. Their positions change, sometimes radically, but by concentrating on the brightest stars you can pick out the general outlines of the sky from the Solar System. That is, the effect even stranger than if all the stars were new.

“It is different,” a voice said in the darkness behind him. He turned and there was Father Simon.

“I’m sorry, you startled me.”

“I seem to be making a habit of that,” Father Simon said ruefully. He caught Jenkins’ puzzled look.

“Never mind,” he said. “I’m sorry to have disturbed you.”

“That’s all right. Please, stay if you want to.”

For a while both men looked at the stars without saying anything.

“You know, Father,” Jenkins said at last, “this is a damned unusual situation.”

“I rather imagine so,” said the priest with feeling.

“No, I don’t mean the aliens, although God knows that’s earthshaking enough. I mean the situation I’m in.”

“How is that?”

“Normally a ship captain has superiors no more than a few hours away—by radio, I mean. A captain can consult with his or her superiors on any major decision.” He sighed. “That’s a good feeling. I never realized how much I relied on that chain of command until now.”

“But surely you didn’t ask for instructions on every little problem?”

“No, of course not. Captains have a lot of freedom of action and especially in an emergency you act first and then ask permission. Still, it’s a tremendous comfort to know there’s someone out there you can call on when you’re not sure what to do.”

“I am familiar with the feeling,” Father Simon said, fingering his clerical collar.

Jenkins was staring out into space and didn’t notice. “Here we’re alone. I’m not used to it. Not with something like this.”

“But it isn’t unknown for a captain to be in this situation,” Father Simon said quietly. “Historically ship captains have usually had to make decisions without direct reference to higher authority.”

“Historically? Oh, you mean naval captains, on Earth’s seas. I suppose so, but commanding a clipper ship doesn’t have much to do with commanding the Maxwell.”

“True,” the priest agreed. “But the traditions, and I believe much of the law, relating to captains and their ships comes from that time.”

“I suppose so,” Jenkins repeated. “But I don’t see the connection.”

“Forgive me, but it occurs to me that perhaps there are lessons to be gleaned from those traditions for our present situation.”

“No one’s ever been in this situation,” Jenkins said wryly.

“Perhaps, but I venture to say that people have often been in similar situations.” He paused and Jenkins turned toward him. The ruddy light of the alien sun caught the priest’s face from below, etching the cheekbones and accentuating the hook of his nose.

“I think the reason humans value tradition is that there is so little we meet that is truly new. Oh, new facts, certainly, and new combinations of circumstances. But so much of what we must deal with is merely old wine poured into new bottles. Traditions tell us how others have coped with similar circumstances, for better or worse.”

“So you think I should do what an old-time sea captain would do?”

“No, I think you should do what you would do. But in deciding that, perhaps you should also consider the lessons embodied in the traditions that grew up when captains were truly ‘masters under God’.”

“There may be something to that,” Jenkins said noncommittally. “I wonder what an old-time sea captain would have done in a situation like this.”

“You could always look in the library,” Father Simon suggested.

###

Logically there was no need for a ship’s library. Screens in offices, cabins or anywhere else in the ship could call up data just as easily as ones in study carrels.

But humans are not entirely creatures of logic. They need to break their routine, to see different people and places. Hence the library. A place of quiet and rest where anyone could go to browse through the available knowledge carried on the Maxwell.

But it was not restful to everyone there.

The damn fools, Major Autro DeLorenzo fumed. The damn blind stupid fools. All they could see was the bait being dangled in front of them. And that wimp captain! Madre de Dios how did a cretin like that ever achieve command?

So they would not protect themselves, eh? Very well, it was up to him to protect all humanity from them.

The library had the complete plans of the ship and all its systems. He had the training to put it to use.

Carefully and methodically, Major Autro DeLorenzo began planning his sabotage.

###

In the observation bubble, Captain Peter Jenkins floated in space and watched the stars. Have I really done the right thing, he wondered. Can we trust beings we have so little in common with? DeLorenzo’s right. The risks are enormous. But so is the reward. He had taken action only after consultation and, indeed, at the urging of the Ship’s Council. However this turned out, he was sure there was no board of inquiry in the Solar System that would find fault with his actions.

But somehow the thought didn’t reassure him.

###

How to reach them, the Council President wondered. How to reach these peculiar creatures and wrest from them the secret of their drive.

Already the ship was under intense scrutiny. Alien instruments studied it from every colony that could bring them to bear and from many other places in space as well. Every emission from the ship was sampled and exhaustively analyzed by the Colonists’ computers. Scientists scrambled through the accumulated knowledge of millennia seeking correlations between the ship’s shape and performance and anything that might possibly offer a clue to the drive’s function. Hypotheses were formulated, argued violently, modified, discarded and formulated anew.

So far, nothing. The scientists and savants talked at great length of what they learned, but none of them could offer the slightest clue as to how the drive might work. There seemed to be nothing in any library anywhere which could shed the slightest clue as to how the drive worked.

For now their best hope, their only hope was to induce them to part with it.

###

“I’m sorry,” Aubrey told the alien, “but our Council has decided to leave discussion of our star drive until a later expedition. Personally it was not my choice, but . . .”

There was a pause while the computer translated the statement and a longer pause while the alien considered it. Aubrey did not realize that the word the humans translated as “council” referred to a governing and arbitrating body between different, independent groups.

“You represent different lineages, then?” the Colonist asked.

“No, we aren’t related, if that’s what you mean. We are many different races and several nationalities.”

The Colonist stood with his head cocked to one side for a long time, apparently listening to a complex translation. When he spoke, he spoke at length and the translation was slow in coming.

“How do you resolve conflicts, then?”

Aubrey looked embarrassed. “We try not to let such notions interfere with us. We strive to work together in peace and harmony.”

Aubrey didn’t realize that the sentence translated into, “We must work constantly and strenuously to achieve an absence of open conflict within our primary group and to find a stable orbit.” Even if he had, he probably would not have seen the difference in the sentence.

The alien froze. He stayed motionless so long Aubrey wondered if something had gone wrong with the video. Then the Colonist flicked his nictating membranes over his eyes and his mouth moved.

“You strive for this?”

“We try to achieve it, yes.” Aubrey sighed. “It is not easy for us. We are a young species and we tend to be combative.”

“It is not good to be too combative,” the alien said without special emphasis.

Yes! The Council President replayed the transmission for the fourth time and tried to stifle the excitement welling up in him.

He had it, he realized. The answer was unbelievably simple and now he had it!

The aliens did not represent a single lineage. There were many lineages and they were bound together by only the most rudimentary agreements. They seemed to have no Covenant at all. Not even for their species as a whole!

As a result they were in constant conflict with one another. Their lineages were weak and seemed unable to enforce more than the most rudimentary discipline. It was not necessary to deal with these creatures’ entire lineage. They could be dealt with individually. One by one they could be bribed, suborned, coerced and threatened into giving up their most precious secret.

And, most incredibly of all, from the sound of it, it could be done with ease. These aliens had no real concept of security. Their channels of communication were almost completely unguarded and their computers were poorly protected.

The Council President spared a thought for the society that lay behind this starship. How had the leaders of their lineages survived so long? It was insanity to send out a ship with so little protection and a crew so hopelessly disunited. Did the Elders of the Inner Grove simply not care what happened to these ships? Incredible. But then the entire situation was incredible.

It really did not matter. They were here, they were as they were and they carried with them a thing of great value. It would be a simple matter to get that information from them now that he had the key.

Turning individuals against their lineages was a technique which had been old among them long before this system was founded. Yes, the Council President thought, the weapons were well in hand to take what was wanted from these strange beings.

He turned from the recorder to the map inlaid on the wall behind him and thrilled again at the vision of power it spread out before him.

There were complications, he admitted to himself. He was sure this same recording was being played and replayed in every Colony in the system. The others were undoubtedly aware of the same weakness and they would move to exploit it.

That would not be easy to control. Concessions would have to be made, of course, and the full Council authority doubtless invoked to keep the colonies from trampling each other in their haste to take advantage of this. But ultimately the Council President had no doubt in his ability to perturb the orbits to his benefit. As always in the scramble of bargaining, coercion, cajoling and arguing, he would emerge on the upper branch. And his lineage would benefit accordingly.

So, the Council President thought. The pieces are all in place. Now let the game begin. The great game for the greatest stake of all.

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