He had set the sound picture so that the string quartet appeared to be playing just over the trapdoor where Robert would emerge into the room. Maybe it would surprise him, but probably not.

In his head, Herb was rehearsing his plan to get a picture of Robert’s ship. He just had a few words to say, but they had to seem nonchalant. He could not give away the fact that he was plotting something. The idea was actually quite simple. Johnston controlled what was picked up by the senses on Herb’s ship, but those weren’t the only senses Herb had at his disposal. Had Robert forgotten the billions of VNMs swarming below? Each a descendant of a machine built to Herb’s design, and each one sporting a rudimentary set of senses? The question was, how to do it without Robert noticing? And the solution was simplicity itself. Herb spoke.

“Hey, Ship. I would like a chocolate malt and a hot salt-beef sandwich. And would you do a full scan out to point one light year? Include sensory information from all other public sources. I want to gather as much data as possible for the records. The state of this planet may be germane to any future legal action brought against me.”

As he spoke, Robert Johnston strode out of the secret passageway. The sight always turned Herb’s stomach slightly. Robert walked up the side of the passageway, perpendicular to the floor of Herb’s ship. As he stepped from the passage to the floor, his body swung through ninety degrees. That last step was dramatic. Robert straightened his hat and smiled at Herb.

“Full system scan, eh? That reminds me. Now that there is no need for them, I must disable the software blocks I placed on your ship’s senses to prevent them seeing my ship. They must be really putting a hole in the middle of your world picture.”

Herb smiled sarcastically. Robert pretended not to notice.

“I see you were about to have a snack. Good idea; I think I’ll join you. You made a good choice. Ship, I’ll have the same as Herb. Chocolate malt and a salt-beef sandwich, hold the meat.”

He gave Herb an apologetic smile. “I’m a vegetarian, didn’t I tell you?”

“Are you really?”

Herb didn’t care. All around him the ship was sucking up its impressions of the immediate surroundings in a bubble point two light years in diameter. Buried somewhere in that set of data would be the images sensed by the VNMs just below him.

Some of those images would reveal Robert’s ship.

Herb was beating Robert at chess. He had arranged his opponent’s captured pieces in a circle around the foam-flecked glass that had held his spiced lager. He grinned across the board as Robert frowned while thinking of his next move.

“Do you want to concede? Again?”

“Not yet. I feel I learn something just by playing through to the end.”

“Please yourself.”

Herb sat back in his seat and began to hum. Robert sighed and moved a piece.

“You don’t want to do that,” Herb warned. “Mate in three moves.”

Robert sighed again. Just for the moment, the arrogant air had left him.

“Herb,” he said, “don’t you ever think that there are more important things than winning? Haven’t you heard the saying ‘It’s far more important to be nice than to be clever’?”

Herb rolled his eyes. “The call of the loser. Okay, have that as your move.”

“That’s all right. I concede.” Robert knocked over his king and stood up. He placed his hat on his head.

“Don’t you want another game?” asked Herb.

“No, thank you. I think I’ll go back to my ship and have a nap.”

Herb shrugged. “Suit yourself. You know, we’ve been hanging over this planet for ten days now. I thought we were supposed to be going off to war. When are we actually going to do something?”

Looking a little sad, Johnston gave a barely perceptible shrug.

“Soon. The first reconnaissance reports are coming back already. We’ll give it another couple of days to see what else we get.”

“What reports?”

“You’ll see. Good night.”

Robert waved good-bye as he stepped into the secret passageway, his body jerking forward through ninety degrees as the new gravity caught hold. He marched away down to his ship.

Herb watched him go, a feeling of frustration burning inside. Even when he won, Robert had a way of making him feel he had lost. Everything he did seemed intended to highlight Herb’s inferiority. Worse, no matter how Herb tried to fight back, he always seemed to end up losing. Herb wasn’t used to that; the few friends he had made had always been chosen as being just slightly less clever than he was.

Herb paused in shock. The idea had never occurred to him before. Was it true? He didn’t know if he wanted to think about it. He quickly changed his line of thought.

The local scan was complete: all the data were stored within the ship. What he needed now was to access the images without Robert noticing what he was doing. Herb had already planned what he would do.

“Ship, play back the results of the last scan, mapped to a 3-D visual feed in the main viewing area. Random jumps every ten seconds, fifty percent probability space focused around the ship to a radius of ten kilometers.”

Herb flopped onto one of the white sofas just as the space before him filled with a view of the planet below: silver machines in a restless sea of unending motion. After ten seconds the view flicked to a sky view of endless grey. Another ten seconds and flick, another view of the planet, this time from much higher up.

Herb sat back, watching patiently. He couldn’t focus straight in on his ship: that would alert Robert’s suspicions. This way, it would seem just like any, everyday, random survey. Sooner or later, the view must fall on Johnston’s ship. Flick, and a shot across the planet’s surface; flick, and a shot into space, the atmosphere fading just enough to show the faint pinpricks of stars beyond; flick, a picture of Herb’s ship, floating in the distance, too faint really to make out any detail. Flick again and nothing but sky. Flick again, and there was Herb’s ship close up and in detail. A white rectangular box with bevelled edges top and bottom. And standing on the roof of Herb’s ship, in the spot where Robert’s ship should have been, wearing the palest blue suit and white spats with a matching carnation in the buttonhole, stood Robert Johnston. He was waving to the “camera.”

Robert Johnston had beaten him again.

Herb had risen early and gone into the ship’s gym to work out. He turned off the VR feed as he wanted to concentrate on the basic feeling of exercising the frustration from his body rather than visualize a pleasant run through the country. He ran six kilometers on the treadmill, did another two kilometers on the rowing machine and then put himself through thirty minutes of high-impact yoga.

After that he staggered, sweating, through to the lounge and called up a breakfast of orange and banana juice, brioche loaf, yellow butter, and honey. Robert Johnston stepped into the room just as Herb was finishing his third thick slice of brioche.

“Good morning, Herb. Ah, excellent! Breakfast. I hope there’s enough left for me.”

Robert sat down on the chair opposite and inspected Herb’s meal.

“Maybe just a few sausages to go with it. See to it, please, Ship.”

“I thought you were a vegetarian.”

“Not on Thursdays.”

Johnston cut himself a slice of brioche and began to eat.

“Mmm. Good choice. Well, the news is, we’ve received enough reports back on the Enemy Domain to begin your briefing. Once we’ve done that, we should be ready to jump into the fight almost immediately.”

“Oh good,” said Herb, weakly. He felt a sudden stab of cold fear deep inside. The easy passage of the past few days had made him almost forget the threatened danger of the Enemy Domain. Now the realization of his predicament came rushing back upon him. In just a few hours he could be dead. Or worse.