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Not bad for a Stone Age barbarian
, Park mused, remembering that
most of Trag’s people still lived a Neolithic lifestyle. The Atackack looked
like giant ants and most Mer biologists believed they had evolved from a
species of weaver ant in India. Whatever the origins of the Atackack, however,
their young learned quickly while still maturing and made ideal students at the
university in Van Winkletown. The young students were considered by their
fellow Atackack to be a new subclass of Shaman, called Scholars in spite of the
fact that most of them had since joined Project Van Winkle’s Exploration Corps
of which the Space Fleet was the largest part.

Park’s musing took him back
several years as he recalled that Project Van Winkle had originally been
established two hundred and fifty million years earlier at the end of the
Twenty-first century to serve as the seed for re-establishing civilization in
the wake of a planetary disaster. Certainly at the time there seemed to be
enough such potential disasters from atomic warfare to a large asteroid that
some feared might strike the Earth. So far as anyone knew, none of those
catastrophes came to pass, but rather than waking up the members of Project Van
Winkle from their stasis capsules, someone in charge had decided to leave the
whole population on “ice,” so to speak. The project had been of the highest
security and very few had even known it existed, which may be why they were
eventually forgotten and only woke up long after they had expected when the
power systems running the stasis fields at Van Winkle Base began to fail.

What they found was a world as
alien to them as any that might be imagined. The Mer were of genetically
altered human stock, designed to live a semi-aquatic lifestyle, with
dolphin-like tails instead of legs. They lived, primarily around the coastlines
of the supercontinent the humans called Pangaea Proxima or sometimes, just
Pangaea. The large landmass was a mash-up of the Americas, Europe and Asia
which had been cast together by tectonic forces over the long time the humans
had been in stasis. There was another, smaller continent that had once been Antarctica
and Australia in the far south of the globe, but so far this had been left
largely unexplored. There was just too much
terra
incognita
on Pangaea to worry about Australis.

The Atackack population sparsely
covered much of Asia. They liked to live in large population centers and rarely
colonized new ones, so there was a lot of space between settlements. And the
human population lived mostly in a single city near where Cleveland had once
been. There was a lot of room left on Earth.

When the human colony had been
barely established, Park and Iris had taken a boat to explore downstream of Van
Winkletown and ran into Marisea, her father Taodore and the Atackack shaman,
Okacktack. The discovery was a surprise on many levels, but Park had been happy
to discover that Project Van Winkle had not woken up in a world devoid of
intelligent species, but filled with only the post-mammalian and post-reptilian
monsters they had encountered soon after coming out of stasis.

Had Park and Van Winkle Commander
Arnsley Theoday known what would happen when they attempted to launch a trio of
communications satellites, they may have been more careful about pushing their
way into outer space. Certainly their Mer allies had warned them about the
“Galactics” who would allow no Earthling to fly any higher than one hundred
miles over the surface of the planet, but neither Park nor Arn had taken the warnings
to heart.

The “Galactics,” who called
themselves the Alliance of Confederated Planets, had a base on Luna, from which
they meant to enforce the quarantine of Earth, but luck and a few ancient
missiles from Park’s first spaceship took them by surprise. One thing led to
another and eventually the Alliance was forced to accept Earth and her people
as full members, but one faction, the Premm would never accept them for reasons
that were as much fanatically religious as they were pragmatically political.

The Premm left the Alliance in
protest, annexed several worlds in systems near their own and declared
themselves to be a holy empire. Park recalled his own recent conversation with
Lord Rebbert of Dennsee, one of Earth’s first friends within the Alliance.
There really was no proof that the mysterious Dark Ships had anything to do
with the Premm. Certainly, neither the Premm nor the Dark Ship People had
acknowledged each other as allies. But the coincidence of the Premm’s
demonstrations within the Diet, timed as they were with the appearance of the
Dark Ships, led even the most skeptical to believe they were working together.
There was no way to verify it. Park had suggested placing a spy on one of the
Premm worlds but Rebbert had assured him there chance of the spy being caught
out was just too high.

“No two species of human are
sufficiently alike,” Rebbert had explained. “There are people on some worlds
who might look like Premm, but the Premm themselves would spot the differences
in short order. The same goes for people from Tramadair trying to pass for an
indigene on Dennsee. Sure, both people have green skin and hair, but the facial
shapes and relative lengths of arms and legs differ but too much.”

Park was still deep in thought
when the blast of an alarm siren filled his cabin. Forgetting he had refused
command of
Independent
, Park ran
pell-mell on to the bridge and demanded to know what was happening. Marisea and
Cousin appeared just behind him. Iris was already at her weapons console.

“We’ve picked up a suspicious
blip on the scope, Admiral,” Tina replied. “We hailed it as per standard
protocol and received no reply, and so have turned to investigate.”

“How far away is it?” Park asked.

“Less than two light-minutes,”
Tina replied. “That’s part of the problem, though. At first reading we thought
it was much farther away and it kept jumping around, but nothing moves that
fast”

“How fast?” Park requested.

“At least two times the speed of
light,” Tina replied. Park’s jaw dropped and Tina chuckled, “Like I said,
‘Nothing moves that fast.’ At Iris’ suggestion we returned our sensors to a
different frequency and the blip settled down. There’s only one thing we know
that screws up the sensors like that, though.”

“A Dark Ship,” Park concluded,
“but we’ve never had that sort of trouble with them before.”

“No, but the rest of the Alliance
has,” Iris spoke up. “That’s why we switched frequencies. I’m still not sure
our readings are entirely accurate but at least that blip isn’t jumping around
at accelerations that would leave rocks looking like jelly. It’s a good thing
Ronnie designed our sensors to be tunable on the fly, though.”

“I just hope whatever passes for
Dark Ship stealthing technology is not as adaptable,” Park remarked. He looked
around and finally returned to the seat beside the navigator’s station while
Marisea sat next to the Mer at Communications. Cousin strolled around the
perimeter of the busy bridge and eventually curled up and went to sleep in one
of the corners.

“It just blipped out,” Tragackack
announced.

“Can we give chase?” Park asked.

“Calculating,” the Atackack
replied. Two years earlier, Veronica Sheetz had discovered a means by which a
ship could be followed through Hyperspace, although until now there had not
been much chance to use it. “I have a trajectory,” he added a moment later.

“Sir?” Tina asked Park.

“If the Dark Ships are back,” he
replied, “we don’t want to let any of them get away.”

“Aye aye, sir,” Tina replied. She
gave a series of orders and
Independent
slipped
back into Hyperspace, hot on the heels of the unknown ship.

“Any idea of where we are
headed?” Park asked during the transference.

“A small system about one hundred
and four light years to galactic west and inward a bit, sir,” Tragackack
replied. Do you want the precise coordinates?”

“Just the name of the syst…” Park
started to reply just as they broke back out into normal space.

“We’re being hailed,” the Mer at
the communications board informed them. Tina gave him a signal that he took to
mean he should pipe the incoming message to the speaker.

“Attention, unknown ships!” a
voice called in the standard Alliance diplomatic language. “This is a
restricted system. Stand down and prepare to be boarded by the authority of the
Iztapel Ruling Committee.”

“Iztapel?” Tina wondered. “Where
have I heard that name before?”

“May have been in one of my
reports” Park told her. “Iztapel has to be the most paranoid culture I have
ever encountered. The major condition to their membership in the Alliance is
that no one enter their system without prior permission. They reserve the right
to destroy any ships who enter unannounced.”

“Comply with the request,” Tina
told her pilot. “Let’s see if we can talk our way out of this. Barrore, open a
channel to the Iztapel ship.”

“Ships, Captain,” the Mer
replied. “There are eight of them, but you have a channel to the lead ship.”

“Thank you,” Tina nodded then
spoke to the Iztapellian ships. “Standing down as requested, Iztapel ship. This
is Captain Tina Linea of the Earth Ship
Independent
.
We did not intrude on your system intentionally…”

“Your intentions are of no
interest to us, Captain,” the Iztapellian responded coldly.

“We are chasing the Dark Ship
that arrived a few minutes before we did,” Tina tried to continue.

“They broke connection, Captain,”
Barrore informed her, “and the Dark Ship just made another jump.”

“Follow them,” Tina decided.

“Our jump drive has not yet
finished recharging,” the pilot informed her.

“And we’re surrounded,” Tragackack
added.

“The Iztapellians are a jumpy
lot,” Park told them all. Whatever you do, do start re-energizing our engines.
Open a channel, please. Iztapellian, this is Ambassador Parker Holman of Earth,
do you read me?”

“Greetings, Your Excellency,” the
Iztapellian responded, although there was no note of welcome in his cold voice.
“What can I do for you?”

“I apologize for our intrusion on
your sovereign territory, but was wondering how my old friend Metipaitzel was
doing. I have not heard from him since he retired a few months ago and was
concerned.”

“The Honorable Metipaitzel is
recovering nicely, sir,” the Iztapellian responded, the tone of his voice
warming noticeably. “It is kind of you to inquire.” Just then a video channel
opened between the two ships and Park realized that they were now on good terms
with the Iztapellians, who would only engage in video conversations with those
they considered friends.

Out of the corner of his eye,
Park noticed Tina studying the image of the creature before them. Iztapellians
were not human, nor even humanoid in shape. Instead they were vaguely
turtle-shaped although they had six limbs and a prehensile tail that functioned
as one of the most efficient grasping organs known within the Alliance of
Confederated Planets. Their tails could grasp, but for detailed and precise
manipulation, they used the fingers on the hands at the ends of their forelimbs
and so they stood and their middle and hind limbs, keeping the forward third of
their bodies elevated. In effect they looked, to Park, like a cross between a
centaur and a tortoise, although their faces were quite flexible and showed a
full range of emotions.

“As I say,” Park shrugged, “He’s
my friend and I have missed his company since he had to retire.”

“Metipaitzel is my great uncle,”
the Iztapellian admitted, adding, “I have the honor of being named,
“Haritaizt.”

“Pleased to meet you Haritaizt,”
Park replied. “Now as to the ship we were following…”

“Yes,” Haritaizt considered.
“Exceptions can always be made for friends. I may have detained you too long,
though, I fear.”

Park glanced at Tragackack who
gave him a most human-like nod. Park sighed and told Haritaizt, “I think it
would be a better use of our time if I were to visit my old friend, don’t you?”

Iztapel smelled like a swamp to
the Earthlings. “It is not unpleasant really,” Marisea commented as though
trying to convince herself more than the others, “I suppose these are all
healthy smells.”

“Just because they are healthy
sorts of smells doesn’t mean they have to be pleasant,” Iris commented, “at
least not to aliens like us. I’m sure this is good fresh air to the
Iztapellians.”

“Not really,” Haritaizt corrected
her. “We have been experiencing a sort of air pollution as of late due to a
chronic seasonal temperature inversion.”

“Smog?” Iris asked, and then
found she had to explain the term.

“Yes,” Haritaizt agreed. “That is
the case, I fear. Truly fresh air is far more fragrant although I am told that
most humans prefer their air relatively unscented. Ah, we are here. Allow me,
please, to announce you to my great uncle.”

He disappeared through a wide red
door set into a tall stucco-covered wall. The buildings in the Iztapellian
capital were all connected to each other so that walking down a street was not
entirely unlike progressing through a maze. Marisea wondered how any visitor
might learn their way around and then realized that might be part of the idea.
The Iztapellians were hospitable to friends, but paranoid about strangers. A
friend would be eagerly escorted throughout the city but a stranger could never
find their way from one place to another.

As she considered that, she saw
the logic in her observation, but found it difficult to understand how the
Iztapellians could ever have built a civilization if even the people in the
next town were suspect. It did not seem to her that such a culture could ever
grow beyond a collection of small villages, and yet the Iztapellians had
managed to do so. She was tempted to ask Haritaizt about it, but decided there
was no way to do so without implying the Iztapellians were not capable of
civilization when they most obviously were. Instead she made a mental note to look
up a text on Iztapellian history when she got back to Earth.