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Morrath. Commander Tell Dramis and Major Weldon had already received their promotions, and Commander Tell Dramis was strongly opposed to the suggestion of a further promotion to Colonel. His exact words were that he’d rather be locked in a prison cell with a Zeus sewer rat.’
    There was a burst of laughter from both the audience on the vid screen and my classmates. Drago had done a lot of talking on the newzies – his jet-black hair and devastatingly handsome face made him incredibly popular with their viewers – and everyone could picture him saying those words.
    ‘Alpha Spectrum,’ said the next questioner. ‘How long will it take to find the alien home world?’
    ‘That depends how far away it is,’ said the General Marshal. ‘Humanity currently has well-established inhabited worlds in Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta sectors, fledgling colony worlds in Epsilon and Kappa sectors, and has just begun Planet First assessment of possible colony worlds in Zeta sector. A complete search of that area of space will take between five months and a year, depending on how we divide manpower and resources between Alien Contact and Planet First efforts.’
    ‘A year!’ The Alpha Spectrum reporter’s words were echoed by Krath sitting next to me. ‘But each sector only has 200 star systems. How can it possibly take that long to search them?’
    ‘Each sector only has 200 inhabited star systems,’ said the General Marshal. ‘Portalling between inhabited worlds gives the illusion they’re packed closely together, when they’re actually scattered widely across space. We’re extremely selective when we choose our colony worlds. For every star system with a planet satisfying the criteria of Planet First, there are a hundred with a planet where human beings could survive with some difficulty, and many thousands with planets completely unsuitable for human life but with their own alien plant and animal life in abundance. Far more star systems exist without any sign of life at all.’
    The next questioner sounded aggressive. ‘Gamma Sector News. You believe the alien home world is within humanity’s space? How could Planet First Stellar Survey have missed a planet with an advanced alien civilization?’
    The General Marshal shook his head. ‘On the contrary, we believe the alien home world is probably further away than that. Tactical considerations, however, mean our first priority is to eliminate any possibility of it being within humanity’s space. Expansion was extremely rapid during Exodus century. Humanity was too impatient to spend enough time checking its colony worlds, let alone waste effort on uninhabitable star systems.’
    He paused for a moment. ‘That reckless overexpansion led to the near collapse of our civilization. It may also have led to signs of an alien civilization being missed in Alpha, Beta or Gamma sectors. After a century of colony worlds struggling to deal with issues overlooked by those first rushed Planet First checks, there was a new attempt to expand and the nightmare of Thetis. A single lethal alien animal species was overlooked, portal quarantine procedures failed, and the chimera infested other worlds, threatening the survival of the human race.’
    There was a moment of grim silence before the General Marshal continued. ‘After the lesson of the Thetis chaos year, humanity finally realized it was vital to allow Planet First teams the time and budget to do a meticulous job, but financial and logistical realities mean we still can’t make an exhaustive search of uninhabitable star systems. I’d be extremely surprised if we’d missed a planet with technology sufficiently advanced to construct the alien probe in Delta, Epsilon or Kappa, but those sectors will be rechecked anyway.’
    The Gamma Sector News reporter wasn’t giving way to anyone else. ‘The newly formed Isolationist Party feel searching for the alien home world is a mistake because humanity would be better off not