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  #

  According to Sar-Say, the Broa were a carnivorous race of reptiles that controlled the stargate network and used it to enslave every intelligent species they encountered. Without interstellar capabilities of their own, the other races were helpless against them. Once discovered, an inhabited world was given a simple choice: submit or die.

  In this way, the Broa had expanded their domain to more than one million stars! After some debate, project researchers settled on the name “Sovereignty” to describe the Broan domain.

  Not a few of those privy to Sar-Say’s interrogations found the story preposterous, claiming the pseudo-simian was the equivalent of a garrulous shipwrecked sailor, spinning yarns for the gullible natives. The problem, therefore, was how to determine the truth or falsehood of his claims. The obvious solution was to send an expedition to spy out the truth. The difficulty was a simple one. Where among the stars should humanity look for these Galactic Overlords?

  Travel via Broan stargate was not like a starship voyage. The gates did not cross the vast gulf between the stars so much as bypass the distance altogether. Like a computer network, the system possessed a topology that was independent of its geography, making astrogation an unnecessary skill among the Broa.

  Travelers embarked on a ship in one system and disembarked in another, never caring how many light years separated the two.

  Although he had visited more than a hundred worlds, Sar-Say had no idea where his travels had taken him. Besides, without a common coordinate system, there was no way to convert his observations into information humanity could use.

  Eventually, frustrated project astronomers hit on a method for testing Sar-Say’s assertions. They asked him to describe unusual astronomical phenomena he had seen, in the hope he would describe something they recognized.

  Sar-Say had a good memory and was a fair artist once Lisa showed him how to use a drawing tablet. He spent the hours sketching night scenes from worlds he had visited. He rendered several constellations formed from bright blue stars. The astronomers programmed their computers to search out all of the known Spectral Class A and B stars in the hope that they could find a position and viewing angle to match Sar-Say’s sketches. They met with no success. The inaccuracies inherent in drawing constellations from memory were just too great.

  One of Sar-Say’s paintings showed a view of a dark alien sea, over which floated large and small crescent moons. Above the moons hovered a complex ball of gas and dust filled with glowing filaments and dark tendrils. Sar-Say explained that on the world in question, this ghostly nebula was larger than the full moon is on Earth and its diffuse silver glow much brighter. The locals called the glowing apparition, “Sky Flower.”

  The object was obviously a supernova remnant, and since there had only been a handful of nearby supernovas since the dawn of recorded history, the astronomers reviewed all the possible candidates. They found a good match with a supernova that had exploded around 6000 B.C in the Constellation of Taurus. The light of that particular cataclysm had not reached Earth until the summer of 1054 A.D, when it was observed by Chinese astronomers.

  Sky Flower, it seemed, was Messier Object Number One — the Crab Nebula!

  #

  The party entered a private lift that whisked them silently to the office of the Director of the Stellar Survey. Mark recognized those already seated around the conference table, including one person he was surprised to see. As he entered, Nadine Halstrom, the World Coordinator herself, stood and greeted him. Others included Anton Bartok, Director of the Stellar Survey, and Dieter Pavel, the World Coordinator’s representative onboard PoleStar. Pavel was also a one-time rival for Lisa Arden’s affections.

  “Welcome home, ladies and gentlemen,” Bartok boomed out. “We have been waiting a long time for this meeting. We’ve read your report, or at least the executive summary. However, Coordinator Halstrom wanted to hear of your adventures direct from the source. Who will be the spokesman?”

  Mark raised one hand and said, “We drew straws and I lost.”

  “Then proceed, Mr. Rykand,” the Coordinator directed.

  “Yes, ma’am. As you know, pursuant to your orders, our fleet set out for the Crab Nebula to see if we could verify Sar-Say’s tales of the Broan Sovereignty. We were 375 days in transit outbound, and upon our arrival, we rendezvoused in System 184-2838, which in keeping with the spirit of the mission, we named Hideout…”

  #

  The expedition to the Crab had actually been to the system of a slightly variable G-Class star some 10 light years distant. Even eight millennia after the cataclysmic explosion, the nebula glowed with an energy equivalent to 75,000 suns. The dynamo that powered it was a spinning neutron star — a pulsar — that was the actual remnant of the supernova. A starship crew unlucky enough to drop sublight anywhere near it would have been struck dead by several kinds of radiation in seconds.

  Upon arriving in the Hideout System, a short search revealed a world twice the diameter of Earth orbiting in the temperate zone, which they named “Brinks.” Brinks had a moon three times larger than Luna, which they named “Sutton.” It was on Sutton that they established their base. Two gas giants in the system were dubbed “Bonnie” and “Clyde.”

  As soon as the first tunnels were drilled into Sutton’s surface and sealed, the team began to sweep the skies for signs of civilization. Several months went by without result before they finally detected a gravity wave emanating from a nearby star, a wave that could only have originated in a stargate.

  Having found what they were looking for, Dan Landon approved a mission to reconnoiter the target star. He put himself in command of the contact party and chose Lisa to be their expert on the Broa. Mark joined the roster by the simple expedient of being the only one available who had the necessary temperament and computer skills. Landon surprised everyone by selecting Mikhail Vasloff, the anti-interstellar activist, as the fourth member. He was tapped for the coveted assignment because Landon wanted someone along who would take a skeptical view.

  After a preliminary reconnoiter, they made contact with the locals, who identified themselves as the Voldar’ik and their planet as Klys’kra’t. The team claimed to be representatives of a race called Vulcans from the planet of Shangri La on the other side of the Sovereignty. To disguise their origin, they traveled in Sar-Say’s salvaged transport, a Type Seven Broan freighter, renamed the Ruptured Whale.

  As a cover story, they had professed interest in various Voldar’ik gadgets. However, their true mission was to acquire astronomical data about the Sovereignty and its network of stargates. That was Mark’s job. While the rest of the team distracted their hosts, he plumbed the Klys’kra’t planetary database on the pretext of searching for marketable products.

  For two weeks, Mark spent every waking moment sitting in front of an alien computer, programming search routines using the peculiar Broan script. He was hampered by the fact that he could not be obvious about what he really wanted, and had to approach queries about the general state of the Sovereignty, the Broa, and all astronomical data as though by accident.

  Even if he had been able to compose straightforward queries, the task would have been hopeless. The planetary data base was several times larger than the Library of Parliament database on Earth. A lifetime was insufficient to find everything they were looking for.

  While Mark labored, Dan Landon broached the subject of purchasing a copy of the database itself, with the cover story that it would help them select trade goods when they returned with a bigger ship. In the meantime, Mark filled the memory of his portable recorder three times with tidbits of interest, if not precisely what he was looking for. Periodically, he returned to the Ruptured Whale to upload what he had learned into its computers.

  It was on his third such trip that he met Effril, the Taff trader.

  #

  “What did you do when he told you he was a Taff trader?”

  “The truth, Ma’am. I nearly crapped my pants.”

&
nbsp; “I take it he looked nothing like Sar-Say?”

  “No, Ma’am. He was tall, blue and furry. Cautiously, I asked him if there were another species by the same name. He said he wasn’t aware of any. Then I explained that I was from a distant world, and being young, had never seen a Broa. I asked Effril to describe one.

  “What he described was nothing like the pictures Sar-Say sketched for us of the Galactic Overlords. In fact, Effril’s description was a perfect fit for Sar-Say himself, right down to his yellow eyes.”

  #

  Chapter Three

  “So Sar-Say is a Broa?” Nadine Halstrom asked.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Mark replied.

  “There isn’t any possibility of a mistake?”

  “We confronted him with it. He confessed.”

  “How did he take the news that he had been outed?”

  Lisa laughed. “He’s a cheeky little bastard. He promised to make us his personal slaves and let us live out our lives in luxury if we returned to Klys’kra’t. We told him to go to hell.”

  “If he lied about himself, he must have told other lies,” the Coordinator mused.

  “I don’t think so, Ma’am,” Lisa replied. “About the Sovereignty itself, he seems to have spoken the literal truth.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he had no way to ascertain what we knew at first. He couldn’t afford to be caught in a lie, else we might have begun wondering if he was who he claimed. Later, it was too late to change his story. So he told us the truth about everything else to keep his identity hidden.”

  “Why?”

  “It was all a plot to get us to take him back to the Sovereignty. He figured that he could get a message to whatever species we contacted. As a master, they would have instantly obeyed any order he gave them. It almost worked.”

  “So, to sum up,” the Coordinator said with a tone of resignation in her voice, “We are facing our worst case scenario. There really is a Broan Sovereignty and it is as big and mean as Sar-Say claims. We were lucky at New Eden. Had things gone differently, it would have been the Broa sending the expedition. We might even now have their boots on our necks. And lastly, there isn’t a goddamned thing we can do about it!”

  “No, Ma’am,” Lisa replied.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “There is something we can do about it.” Lisa turned to Mark. “Tell her your idea, darling!”

  #

  The wardroom aboard the Ruptured Whale was a depressing place during that long climb from Klys’kra’t. Mark Rykand had been especially dejected, for only he knew how close Sar-Say’s scheme had come to succeeding.

  However, as Samuel Johnson once remarked, “The prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully.” In response to an offhand comment from Lisa, he had been struck by an inspiration so bold that it had momentarily stunned him. Even now, a year later, he could think of no reason why his idea wouldn’t work… save that the human race lacked the fortitude to attempt it.

  In the instant that Lisa turned to him, his confidence drained away, replaced with doubt. What, he thought, if I am wrong?”

  Living with a person for three years gives one sensitivity to their nuances. Sensing Mark’s turmoil, Lisa gave his hand a gentle squeeze and smiled. Encouraged, Mark took a deep breath, gazed around at the expectant faces, cleared his throat, and launched into the speech that he had practiced in his head for more than a year.

  “Madame Coordinator. Gentlemen. The Broa are probably the biggest threat the human race has ever faced. That is why you sent us seven thousand light years to verify the tall tales of a shipwrecked alien. If even half of what Sar-Say said was true, then we just couldn’t ignore the threat.

  “We are back to report that the Sovereignty is very real and even more dangerous than we had feared. We are not helpless, however. There is something we can do.”

  “Then let us hear it!” Nadine Halstrom said, impatiently.

  “Yes, ma’am. To make sense, I need to start at the beginning, which in this case, is a trip Lisa and I took while planning the expedition.

  #

  Planning for the Crab Nebula Expedition had taken place on Earth under stringent security, at a private resort on the North African coast. Mark and Lisa both attended for their particular working groups — Mark for Astronomy and Lisa for Alien Technologies. On the third day of the conference, they found themselves with no commitments. Lisa suggested that they visit the nearby Rock of Gibraltar, explaining that one of her ancestors commanded the British garrison there during the siege of 1782.

  “An interesting tale, Mr. Rykand,” Nadine Halstrom said, “but what has that to do with our situation?”

  “During the retreat from Klys’kra’t, a bunch of us were sitting around the wardroom, moaning about our troubles, when Lisa said that it was a shame we didn’t have an impregnable fortress like The Rock to defend us against the Broa.

  “The comment triggered a thought. I suddenly realized that she was wrong. We do have such a fortress.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”

  “The Broa rule a million suns and so far as we can tell, there has not been a single successful revolt against them in thousands of years.”

  “I imagine that is precisely what Mikhail Vasloff will tell the public. By the way, where is Citizen Vasloff? I expected to see him here.”

  “In quarantine aboard PoleStar, by your order.”

  “My order?”

  Dieter Pavel cleared his throat. “I sent the order, Madame Coordinator. I figured that we didn’t want him rabble rousing until you’d had a chance to hear the report of the expedition.”

  “He isn’t truly ill, is he?”

  “His doctor thinks he has a cold. I argued that one couldn’t be too careful with E.T. viruses.”

  “You will go far in politics, my boy,” she told her assistant with a smile. “Either that or you will be hanged.” Turning back to Mark, “You said we have an impregnable fortress to defend us, Mr. Rykand. What might that be?”

  “Why, our anonymity, of course. The Broa don’t know where to find us. They don’t even know we exist. That, and the stardrive. The stardrive gives us freedom of action.”

  “Freedom of action to do what? Hide?”

  “No, Ma’am. The one thing we cannot do is hide.”

  “We have remained hidden this long.”

  “We’ve been lucky. Evan, care to handle this?”

  Dr. Evan Thompson, Alien Technologist, nodded and took over the narrative. “Sooner or later, the Broa are going to discover our little corner of the universe.”

  “How?”

  “Any number of ways. One of their ships may just blunder into one of our systems. In fact, it has already happened at New Eden. Then there is our electromagnetic footprint. We’ve been spewing radio, television, and holovision in all directions for centuries. What if some Broa picks up one of the early television programs? How long before their war fleet follows?”

  “The Broan Sovereignty is 7000 light-years from here. If I understand my Einsteinian physics, that means that our radio waves will not reach them until we begin writing our dates with five digits.”

  “We don’t know that,” Thompson replied with a shake of his shaggy mane. “The Crab Nebula is 7000 light-years distant. For all we know, the nebula marks the farthest reach of the Sovereignty. There could be a Broan world just beyond our expanding radio bubble right now.”

  “Not a very likely scenario, that,” Anton Bartok muttered.

  “Are you willing to risk the existence of the human race on that assumption?” Mark asked him, taking back control of the conversation.

  “If we don’t hide, what do we do?” a perplexed Nadine Halstrom asked.

  Mark looked at her, his features etched by determination. “Madam Coordinator, we can’t hide, not forever. And once they discover us, all will be lost. That leaves us a window of opportunity in which to act.”

  “Act to do wh
at?”

  Mark shrugged. “Simple, really. We attack them before they can attack us!”

  #

  The subject of the conference sat in his cell aboard PoleStar and contemplated his future.

  It had been five cycles since Sar-Say had fallen into the clutches of humans. Having survived the ambush on his transport, he had been shocked when his rescuers did not immediately recognize him. That shock had been compounded when he realized they were not subservients. In fact, they seemed not to know about Civilization at all. The thought that he was the captive of wild aliens frightened him more than had the attempted assassination that led him to this unknown section of space.

  Worse, their ship was unlike any he had ever seen, or even heard of. It did not jump from point to point via stargates. Rather, it crossed the black gulf between stars like a water vessel sails an ocean. That alone proved that they were not of Civilization. For he could think of no other invention that would subvert the natural order quite so much as unrestricted access to the stars.

  He’d had a great deal of time to think on that first voyage to the humans’ home planet. When they tried to speak with him, he pretended not to understand. For when he finally acknowledged their loud words and pantomime gestures, he would have but one chance to get his story right. There was much to consider.

  Of necessity, his plan had been a simple one. It was critical that they not recognize him as a master. For if they did, they would likely kill him out of hand. Nor did the prospect of life in a cage appeal to him. He needed to find a way to get them to return him home without realizing that they were doing so. For that, he must gain their trust. He concluded that he would have to tell them the truth about nearly everything.

  There was risk in his plan, of course. Not knowing human psychology, he worried that the truth might frighten them into concealment. That would doom him to a lifetime of captivity.

  He need not have worried, for the humans reacted with the same primate curiosity that his own people possessed. When they identified Sky Flower, they organized an expedition to seek out Civilization.