Nevertheless, this motley crew had sunk tendrils of root into the soil of Xanadu with surprising rapidity. The population had already outgrown government by a Navy administrator, and a provisional government had been organized under the duly appointed Federal governor preparatory to seeking full Federation membership. Watching the constitutional convention, Prescott had occasionally found himself wondering if someone had formed a club for disbarred lawyers. And yet, oddly enough, some genuine political creativity had come out of it. Architectural creativity, too; looking to the future, they'd approved plans for a stately Government House on a hill above the river-named the Alph, naturally-that Prescott could see in the distance, beyond the spacefield. Of course, actual construction was being deferred until things became a little less unsettled here . . . meaning, no Bugs a single warp transit away.

Which, Prescott reminded himself briskly, is why we're here. He turned away from the window. Zhaarnak was waiting with the patience that was one facet of his seemingly contradictory character.

"Have they arrived yet?" the human asked.

"Yes. In fact, they are waiting in the outer office."

Prescott nodded, sat down at his desk, and touched a button.

"Send Small Claw Uaaria and Captain Chung in."

Uaaria'salath-ahn, Zhaarnak's staff intelligence officer, was the senior of the two spooks. By the generally recognized rank equivalencies, a "small claw of the khan" was somewhere between a captain and a commodore. So she led the way into the room, and Prescott reflected on how unusual it was to see an Orion female wearing the jeweled harness that was their navy's uniform. Not so very long ago, it would have been unheard of, and that, too, was a change which owed more than a little to the Terran example. The patriarchal Khanate had been headed in that direction even before it discovered just how capable human females could be as warriors in the first two interstellar wars. Since then-and especially since ISW 3-the move towards full female integration into the military had gone on with what (for the extremely tradition-bound Orions) was enormous rapidity.

On the other hand, female Orions still had to "prove" their worthiness for their ranks by being even better at the same job than the vast majority of males could have been. In some ways, Uaaria's position was a bit easier than most, for Prescott knew that her father was an old friend and war comrade of Zhaarnak's. He also knew his vilkshatha brother well enough to realize that he retained enough of his race's old sexism to find his intelligence officer extremely pleasant to look upon, although he would no more consider taking liberties with her than he would have considered it with one of his own daughters. But in one respect, at least, Uaaria was a perfect exemplar of what it took for a female to succeed in the Khanate's military: she was very good at her job. In fact, she was very, very good. Despite her youth, Prescott considered her to be one of the half dozen finest intelligence officers, human or Orion, he'd ever met, and he knew Zhaarnak relied upon her analyses implicitly.

As did Prescott himself.

"Sit down," he invited.

"Thank you for seeing us on such short notice Fang Pressssscottt, Small Fang," Uaaria murmured, lowering herself into one of the chairs in front of Prescott's desk as naturally as if she hadn't been raised to sit on piles of floor cushions.

"No problem. When the two of you requested this meeting, we were eager to hear the results of your analysis of what we observed during the offensive."

"Particularly," Zhaarnak added, "your interpretation of the unprecedented confusion that overtook the Bahgs after our first major surface strike on Planet I."

"We still cannot be certain as to the cause," Uaaria replied cautiously. "Our working hypothesis is still the same one Fang Presssssscottt advanced at the time: that all the Bahgs in a given system are in some kind of telepathic rapport, and that destroying that many of them at once had an effect on the rest similar to . . . to . . ."

"To hitting them over the head with a hammer," Chung offered.

"Something of the sort," Uaaria allowed. "But whatever the precise mechanism of the phenomenon, its effects were clearly system-wide."

"A pity they are not universal," Zhaarnak muttered.

"That wouldn't do us much good, considering that the disorientation is only temporary and no one's ever figured out how to coordinate attacks in different systems," Prescott observed. One human head nodded and two sets of Orion ears flicked in agreement. Simultaneity was a meaningless concept in interstellar space. "But even so," the admiral continued, turning back to Uaaria, "this seems to offer an advantage we can exploit when attacking heavily populated Bug systems."

"Indeed, Fang. In order to throw such a system's defenders off balance, the inhabited planets should be bombarded as early and as heavily as possible."

"Hmmm. . . ." Prescott considered that for a moment. The ethical issues such a policy would have raised in a war with any other race never even entered his mind-these were Bugs. But that didn't mean there weren't practical problems.

"An ideal combination of circumstances let us land the punch we did," he mused aloud. "Possibly an unrepeatable combination. Still, it's something to bear in mind. For now, though, please continue with your other conclusions."

"A few conclusions and a great deal of speculation," Uaaria demurred. "I will let my colleague here state our first conclusion, as it was he who arrived at it."

"Before we left Alpha Centauri last May," Amos Chung began, "I got Admiral LeBlanc to copy me the data by which his Lieutenant Sanders had inferred the existence of five Bug 'home hives.' Based on the observations and sensor information we recorded during the engagement, I'm prepared to state that the system we attacked was Home Hive Three."

Prescott and Zhaarnak exchanged glances. Chung's announcement had the same kind of resonance as Sanders' briefing at Alpha Centauri: it imposed at least the beginnings of form on the threat they faced.

"We are not," Chung went on, "in a position as yet to place Home Hive Three in any larger context, as we have no idea where it lies in relation to any other Bug system-"

"Naturally," Zhaarnak said, and it was Prescott's turn to nod agreement. Not a single scrap of Bug navigational data had been captured in the entire war. Or, more accurately, tonnes of it might have been captured, but no one had any way to know.

"-but I've run a cost analysis of the defenses we encountered there. You may find the results informative."

"A 'cost analysis'?" Even someone far less familiar with the Tongue of Tongues than Prescott could have read the incredulity in Zhaarnak's voice. "How was this possible?"

"The energy-emission readings allowed us to estimate the system's total economic output. And by analogizing to our own defensive installations, we can estimate how much of such output is required to maintain them. Admittedly, this is a case of estimate piled atop estimate. But if our figures are at all valid-and we believe they are-the defenses were strangely light for the system they were protecting."

Both admirals sat up straight.

"Light?" Prescott echoed. He recalled that mastodonic space station. "Surely that can't be right!"

Chung read the admiral's thoughts.

"Yes, Sir, I know. That space station at Planet I was huge, and they had another one like it at Planet II. And I don't like to think about the firepower those orbital fortresses could have put out if we hadn't caught them flat footed." The spook visibly braced himself against an anticipated blast of high-ranking skepticism. "Nevertheless, if our assumptions are correct, the maintenance costs of those defenses amounted to only about forty-eight percent of the gross system product."