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“Park,” Iris explained, “what she
means is the exciter got turned off. It’s a device that makes the molecules of
the fuel all jumpy as though they’d been super-heated except it’s all just
mildly warm. It also keeps the fuel moving at a nice constant rate. If you try
running the engines without it, the fuel gets sort of clumpy. Sometimes there’s
too much, sometimes not enough. If there’s too much the whole thing might be
unstable.”

“Why don’t we have to wait on the
ground then?” Park asked.

“Normally, it never gets turned
off,” Iris responded. “I just hope that Dark Ship doesn’t decide to come back.
Before we get the exciter back up.”

“Why didn’t they follow up?” Park
wondered. “They had us. We were helpless.”

“Maybe their moral code does not
allow them to attack a helpless enemy?” Marisea suggested.

“Then why attack civilians?” Park
countered. “Did our fighters manage to drive it away?”

“Why didn’t they use the metal
screech weapon for that matter?” Iris asked. “That ship and some of the others,
maybe, were strange. Maybe they were as experimental as
Tawatir
? The weapons were new to us in any case and they have
something that causes some of our missiles to go awry.”

“The high speed ones,” Iris
nodded. “I wonder if that was the same weapon. The high speed missiles need a
lot more active guidance. If the electronic power got shut down, the missiles
would just spin out of control. The other missiles tend to be more stable in
flight. . Knock out the guidance and they’ll keep going in whichever way you
pointed them. They can be dodged that way, but you do have to move. That might
explain why we did not score better with the long rangers, though.”

“We have communications back,” Marisea
reported. “Admiral Dannet wants to know if we need help.”

“We’re coming back on-line, but
we can use help picking up the survivors,” Park told her. “How did his unit
hold up?”

“Better than this one did,”
Marisea commented, “but I think he lost half his ships.”

“Tell him to see to his own
survivors there first then,” Park told her. “We’ll have
 
Forward Thinking
start
seeing to the ones here.”

“
Forward’s
fixing up some moderate damage too,” Marisea reported,
“But Captain Marsis says they’re mobile. Should I recall our fighters, by the
way?”

“Where are the surviving Dark
Ships?” Park asked.

“There are only two survivors,”
Marisea told him, “and they are headed out system at a higher rate of
acceleration than we can handle.”

“Keep an eye on them,” Park told
her, “What condition are our fighters in?”

“I’ll ask,” Marisea replied. She
reported a few minutes later, “Sounds like the Dark ships didn’t take them
seriously enough. They barely shot at the fighters.”

“We need more fighters then,”
Park decided. “Good. Then have them continue to patrol until those Dark Ships
are out of the system.”

“We’re not the only system that’s
been attacked,” Dannet told his father’s council a week later. Park, and the
captains of the Earth ships were in the conference room. Dannet had a wide
chart displayed in which a list of worlds, the size of the attacking fleet and
the amount of damage. “In fact, compared to some worlds, we got off easy. Had
the Dark Ships gotten past our defenses they would have attacked our major
cities. Half our ships were permanently disabled or destroyed. Dozens of our
people were killed in space, but tens of thousands of Dennseeans would have
died in the attack.

“The Diet is being reconvened early
in emergency session on Felina as previously planned,” Lord Rebbert took over
the briefing. “Unfortunately the doctors will not allow me to travel for
another month. Dannet, I will need you to represent Dennsee in the Diet until I
can get to Felina for myself.”

“I would rather fight the Dark
Ships,” Dannet admitted.

“You may still get to do that,”
Rebbert told him. “For now, however, you’d better start packing.”

“When we’re done here, father,”
Dannet told him. “Park, according to the packet, Earth has been requested to
send ships to help defend Felina while the Diet is in session and word has
arrived that Earth has agreed.”

“I sure hope they’ll be bringing
more missiles for the ships we already have here,” Park commented, “but I’m
glad to hear Arn and the Primes are finally seeing it my way. Was there an
attack on Earth too?”

“Only three Dark Ships approached
the Earth,” Dannet replied, checking his notes and allowing his displayed chart
to scroll to the appropriate row. “All three were destroyed, but seven Earth
ships were damaged. I understand, however, there was no loss of life on the
Earth ships.”

“Good,” Park nodded. “Do we know
how many ships Earth is sending?”

“We’ll find out when they
arrive,” Dannet replied. “Now we need to discuss our own defenses if Dennsee is
to send ships to Felina.”

“I hate to say this to a friend,
Dannet,” Park told him, “but your defenses are in bad shape. I think we should
leave all your ships here and
Forward
Thinking
as well. You and your staff may travel on
Tawatir
, of course.”

“That’s a generous offer,”
Rebbert told him, “But it is essential for Dennsee to send ships to the defense
of Felina.”

“Why?” Park countered. “Face
saving?”

“As my son pointed out,” Rebbert
replied, “We survived better than most of the worlds who were attacked. We do
not have a legitimate reason not to show the flag at this time.”

“Fine,” Park nodded, “but if
that’s the case, I had better leave you
Grantir’s
Choice
and
Peg Leg
as well. You
may need them.”

“So might you,” Rebbert replied.

“Perhaps, but no one can be in
two places at once and we already know there are more ships coming from Earth,”
Park told him. “Besides
Peg Leg
still
needs repairs and they’ll be better accomplished on the ground than while en
route to Felina and
Grantir’s Choice
used up nearly all her missiles in battle. We’ll leave as many as we can spare
and hope Earth thinks to resupply us. I’ll also request they send some here so
our ships will have our full complement.”

“Seems to me,” Rebbert remarked,
“that Dennsee should really start making missiles too. You tell us this is
ancient technology, but it is almost unknown today, and yet that ancient
technology was crucial to our recent victory.”

“They have been good for us,”
Park agreed, “but the Dark Ship aliens have been working on their defenses
against them. The ones that lost guidance bothered me, but watching another
shot go completely through a Dark Ship without causing harm was deeply
disturbing. Iris tells me she think these were experimental defenses on the
part of the aliens. We can only thank the Heavens that they did not send more
such experiments at us.”

“I don’t like the idea of shots
passing through those ships without effect either,” Rebbert remarked. “Could
they have been illusory in some way?”

“That was my first thought,” Park
admitted, “but that does not seem to be the case. The ships were real enough.
Veronica Sheetz believes this may have been a new application of the Dark
Ship’s ability to change shape. If so, she believes we can overcome it by
adding in proximity fuses to the missiles. Actually, they will be all the more
effective that way as they will explode deep within the enemy ships.”

“How soon can you have missiles
like that?” Rebbert asked.

“Ronnie’s working on adapting
some now,” Park replied, “Somehow I don’t think it will be too long before we
get a chance to try them out.”

The trip to Felina was a quiet
time for most of the people on
Tawatir
except for Ronnie Sheetz who, after adapting the few long range missiles that
had been transferred from
Grantir’s
Choice
, went on to cobble together more proximity fuses to install later.
Marisea spent much of her free time giving Cousin the attention she seemed to
crave instinctively, but also socialized with the crew and with Sartena,
playing games and solving puzzles.

The Mer even managed to convince
her
tamovir
, to take time to do the
same. “Park, you need to relax sometime. And going over old fights is a matter
of diminishing returns. You and Dannet have picked that last battle to pieces.
Time to let it go for a while. Why don’t you play a little Chess?”

“I’ve never been a Chess player,”
Park admitted. “The game bores me.”

“Bores you?” Marisea asked
incredulously. “How could it possibly…”

Park sat down at the table across
from Marisea. Cousin immediately jumped off her lap and climbed up into Park’s.
“Many players find Chess to be an elegantly challenging game. I see the
challenge but find the multiplicity of pieces to be unaesthetically
complicated. I know the game evolved gradually, but it’s a mishmash of pieces,
meant, I suppose to simulate the different units and their specialties of an
army. I’ve played many times, but when it comes to strategy games I prefer ones
with a single type of piece. Checkers, perhaps, although pieces change behavior
in that game. The predecessor to Checkers, Alquerques, is more to my taste, or
the so-called Viking Chess, Tafl, or even Nine-Man Morris. The king of all the
one-piece games, to my thinking, is Go. Like Chess it all comes down to the
capture and holding of territory, but the pieces, called stones, are all alike
and their value is determined by their position and that of the other stones of
like color rather than their abilities.”

“Show me how to play that then,”
Marisea requested.

Parked looked down at the table
they were seated at and realized that the
 
top was programmable. It had been set to resemble a chess board, but
Park realized he could hange that. “Go run down to Ronnie’s deck,” he told her,
“and ask for two boxes of washers, brass and galvanized.”

“How many of each?” Marisea
asked.

“One box each,” Park replied,
“unless she needs them immediately, in which case take as many as she can
spare.” She hop-stepped to the ship’s elevator while Park worked on
reprogramming the table top. By the time he had it looking like wood with a square
grid composed of nineteen lines from each direction, she had returned with the
washers.

“So what’s the starting
position?” she asked brightly.

“We start with an empty field,”
Park explained, “and the whole point of the game is to control the most
territory. This is done by placing stones on the board and capturing territory
by surrounding it with your stones. Let me give you a few examples.” He went on
to demonstrate the basics of Go and managed to play through a game before
either of them had to report to the bridge for their next watch.

After discussing the climate of
Felina with Lord Rebbert, Park had expected a cold world and was not surprised
to arrive in orbit over a world that was locked in the middle of an ice age.
But when he commented to that effect, Marisea corrected him.

“Actually for the last ten
thousand years, Felina has been enjoying a milder than normal climate,” she
informed him.

Park looked again at the world
below. The ice caps were large and stretched from the poles down and up to
sixty degrees longitude. At least he thought they did. It was difficult to tell
the ice from the clouds. He fiddled with the display to remove the clouds and
saw that south and north of the ice sheets, in the temperate climate bands of
the world there was snow over wide portions of the ground nearly to the
equator. “Milder being a relative term,” Park commented. “Iris, did we remember
to pack our parkas?”

“No, dear,” Iris told him, “But
Lord Rebbert did see to it that we were provided with the necessary thermal
garments to wear under our clothing.”

“He sent us long johns?” Park
asked.

“Nothing so primitive,” Iris
assured him. “Much thinner and probably more comfortable as well.”

“And the Diet Hall will be kept
at the same moderate temperatures you were used to on Owatino,” Sartena assured
him. “In fact I would not be surprised if the Felinans raise the temperatures
anywhere they expect us to be, despite their own preferences.”

“Why would that be?” Park asked.

“Their Code of Behavior, of
course,” Sartena replied with a hint of humor in her voice. Park recalled that
the Tzantzans like so many of the more liberal members of the Alliance found
the strict Felinan code a perennial source of humor. “Seriously, their Code
demands hospitality to a guest over their personal comfort. No Felinan will
allow us to be cold if it is within their power to prevent it.”

“We’ve been in orbit for five
hours, though,” Park noted. “Apparently the code does not extend to allowing us
to land promptly.”

“Felina is no one’s idea of a
vacation planet,” Sartena chuckled. “Even the winter sports enthusiasts go
elsewhere. I think even the Felinans go elsewhere, so their ports aren’t built
to handle such a large influx of ships. It does bring up the question, though,
why was Felina chosen for this meeting of the Diet?”

“Politics,” Park replied. “Felina
is fanatically loyal to the Alliance, but not necessarily a friend to Lord
Rebbert’s faction in the Diet. In the last few years, He and Pakha Grintz had
been enjoying a warmer than usual relationship, but we don’t know how his son
will see us. So since he has offered his hospitality it was felt that it would
be best to accept.”

“Park!” Marisea announced
suddenly. “I’m picking up an alert. Five Dark Ships have just been spotted at
the edge of the Stierdach limit and are headed inward. No, another group of five
just arrived as well.”

“Contact the defense commander of
the Alliance fleet on guard in this system,” Park told her. “Tell him Black
Admiral McArrgh wants to know if he wants help.”