However — attack that far within the sphere? No! Individual ships could sneak between the stars easily enough. But a war fleet could never come a hundred light-years inward from the farthest Imperial bases. The instantaneous “wake” of disturbed space-time, surging from so many vessels, would be certain of detection somewhere along the line. Therefore—

“Those ships were built within our sphere,” said Flandry slowly. “And not too many parsecs from Vixen.”

Fenross sneered. “Your genius dazzles me. As a matter of fact, though, they might have come further than usual, undetected, because so much of the Navy is out at Syrax now. Our interior posts are stripped, some completely deserted. I’ll agree the enemy must base within several parsecs of Vixen. But that doesn’t mean they live there. Their base might be a space station, a rogue planet, or something else we’ll never find; they could have sent their fleet to it a ship at a time, over a period of months.”

Flandry shook his head. “Supply lines. Having occupied Vixen, they’ll need to maintain their garrison till it’s self-sufficient. No, they have a home somewhere in the Imperial sphere, surely in the same quadrant. Which includes only about a million stars! Say, roughly, 100,000 possibilities, some never even catalogued. How many years would it take how many ships to check out 100,000 systems?”

“Yeh. And what would be happening meanwhile?”

“What has?”

“The Vixenites put up a fight. There’s a small naval base on their planet, unmanned at present, but enough of the civilian population knew how to make use of its arsenal. They got couriers away, of course, and Aldebaran Station sent what little help it could. When last heard from, Vixen was under siege. We’re dispatching a task force, but it’ll take time to get there. That wretched Syrax business ties our hands. Reports indicate the aliens haven’t overwhelming strength; we could send enough ships to make mesons of them. But if we withdrew that many from Syrax, they’d come back to find Merseia entrenched in the Cluster.”

“Tie-in?” wondered Flandry.

“Who knows? I’ve got an idea, though, and your assignment will be to investigate it.” Fenross leaned over the desk. His sunken eyes probed at Flandry’s. “We’re all too ready to think of Merseia when anything goes wrong,” he said bleakly. “But after all, they live a long ways off. There’s another alien power right next cloor … and as closely interwoven with Merseia as it is with us.”

“You mean Ymir?” Flandry snorted. “Come now, dear chief, you’re letting your xenophobia run away with you.”

“Consider,” said Fenross. “Somebody, or something, helped those aliens at Vixen build a modern war fleet. They couldn’t have done it alone: we’d have known it if they’d begun exploring stellar space, and knowledge has to precede conquest. Somebody, very familiar with our situation, has briefed the aliens on our language, weapons, territorial layout — the works. Somebody, I’m sure, told them when to attack: right now, when nearly our whole strength is at Syrax. Who? There’s one item. The aliens use a helium-pressure power system like the Ymirites. That’s unmistakable on the detectors. Helium-pressure is all right, but it’s not as convenient as the hydrogen-heavy atom cycle; not if you live under terrestroid conditions, and the aliens very definitely do. The ships, their shape I mean, also have a subtly Ymirite touch. I’ll show you pictures that have arrived with the reports. Those ships look as if they’d been designed by some engineer more used to working with hydrolithium than steel.”

“You mean the Ymirites are behind the aliens? But—”

“But nothing. There’s an Ymirite planet in the Vixen system too. Who knows how many stars those crawlers have colonized … stars we never even heard about? Who knows how many client races they might lord it over? And they travel blithely back and forth, across our sphere and Merseia’s and — Suppose they are secretly in cahoots with Merseia. What better way to smuggle Merseian agents into our systems? We don’t stop Ymirite ships. We aren’t able to! But any of them could carry a force-bubble with terrestroid conditions inside … I’ve felt for years we’ve been too childishly trustful of Ymir. It’s past time we investigated them in detail. It may already be too late!”

Flandry stubbed out his cigaret. “But what interest have they got in all this?” he asked mildly. “What could any oxygen-breathing race have that they’d covet — or bribe them with?”

“That I don’t know,” said Fenross. “I could be dead wrong. But I want it looked into. You’re going back to Jupiter, Captain. At once.”

“What?”

“We’re chronically undermanned in this miserable stepchild of the service,” said Fenross. “Now, worse than ever. You’ll have to go alone. Snoop around as much as you can. Take all the time you need. But don’t come back without a report that’ll give some indication — one way or another!”

Or come back dead, thought Flandry. He looked into the twitching face across the desk and knew that was what Fenross wanted.

He got Chives out of arrest and debated with himself whether to sneak back to Ruethen’s party. It was still going on. But no. Aycharaych would never have mentioned his own departure without assuming Flandry would notify headquarters. It might be his idea of a joke — it might be a straightforward challenge, for Aycharaych was just the sort who’d enjoy seeing if he could elude an ambush — most likely, the whole thing was deliberate, for some darkling purpose. In any event, a junior Intelligence officer or two could better keep tabs on the Chereionite than Flandry, who was prominent. Having made arrangements for that, the man took Chives to his private flitter.

Though voluptuous enough inside, the Hooligan was a combat boat, with guns and speed. Even on primary, sub-light drive, it could reach Jupiter in so few hours that Flandry would have little enough time to think what he would do. He set the autopilot and bade Chives bring a drink. “A stiff one,” he added.

“Yes, sir. Do you wish your whites laid out, or do you prefer a working suit?”

Flandry considered his rumpled elegance and sighed. Chives had spent an hour dressing him — for nothing. “Plain gray zip-suit,” he said. “Also sackcloth and ashes.”

“Very good, sir.” The valet poured whisky over ice. He was from Shalmu, quite humanoid except for bald emerald skin, prehensile tail, one-point-four meter height, and details of ear, hand, and foot. Flandry had bought him some years back, named him Chives, and taught him any number of useful arts. Lately the being had politely refused manumission. ("If I may make so bold as to say it, sir, I am afraid my tribal customs would now have a lack of interest for me matched only by their deplorable lack of propriety.")

Flandry brooded over his drink a while. “What do you know about Ymir?” he asked.

“Ymir is the arbitrary human name, sir, for the chief planet of a realm — if I may use that word advisedly — coterminous with the Terrestrial Empire, the Merseian, and doubtless a considerable part of the galaxy beyond.”

“Don’t be so bloody literal-minded,” said Flandry. “Especially when I’m being rhetorical. I mean, what do you know about their ways of living, thinking, believing, hoping? What do they find beautiful and what is too horrible to tolerate? Good galloping gods, what do they even use for a government? They call themselves the Dispersal when they talk Anglic — but is that a translation or a mere tag? How can we tell? What do you and I have in common with a being that lives at a hundred below zero, breathing hydrogen at a pressure which makes our ocean beds look like vacuum, drinking liquid methane and using allotropic ice to make his tools?

“We were ready enough to cede Jupiter to them: Jupiter-type planets throughout our realm. They had terrestroid planets to offer in exchange. Why, that swap doubled the volume of our sphere. And we traded a certain amount of scientific information with them, high-pressure physics for low-pressure, oxygen metabolisms versus hydrogen … but disappointingly little, when you get down to it. They’d been in interstellar space longer than we had. (And how did they learn atomics under Ymirite air pressure? Me don’t ask it!) They’d already observed our kind of life throughout … how much of the galaxy? We couldn’t offer them a thing of importance, except the right to colonize some more planets in peace. They’ve never shown as much interest in our wars — the wars of the oxygen breathers on the pygmy planets — as you and I would have in a fight between two ant armies. Why should they care? You could drop Terra or Merseia into Jupiter and it’d hardly make a decent splash. For a hundred years, now, the Ymirites have scarcely said a word to us. Or to Merseia, from all indications. Till now.