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cover story.”
    Bartok nodded. “My assistant is explaining to him that his sister ran into an errant piece of space junk.
    That should satisfy him. We will also send someone to help with the funeral arrangements. I figure if we are helpful enough, he will soon give up rooting around for details.”
    “It sounds like you have things well under control, Anton. Now, then, what do you make of the fact that these aliens attacked our scout and starship without warning?”
    “Obviously, they’re warlike.”
    “I thought species who have achieved interstellar travel were supposed to be long past the war stage. In fact, I once wrote a thesis to that effect.”
    “Apparently, your thesis is in need of revision.”
    “They must be very confident,” she mused. “The speed with which they attacked the scout indicates that they didn’t consider Magellan a threat.”
    “How could they know whether it was or wasn’t?” Bartok asked. “They’d never seen a human ship before.”
    “Paranoid?”
    “Possibly. Still, the fact that they attacked us without provocation is less disturbing than what our people found onboard that derelict. You saw the bodies. Did they look like the same species to you?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “The survivor represents a third species, and those who destroyed our scout, a possible fourth.”
    “Where does that leave us?”
    “In a very precarious position, Madame Coordinator. The evidence suggests that somewhere not far from here, there are two interstellar civilizations at war with one another. One of these civilizations contains at least three stars, probably more. Possibly, a lot more! Maybe they both do.”
    “Does that necessarily follow?” Nadine asked as she stared at the director over steepled fingers. “After all, if someone boarded one of our starships, they’d find humans, dogs, cats, parakeets, cockroaches, and a dozen other species.”
    “You haven’t had time to read Captain Landon’s report,” the director said as he held aloft a report marked Stellar Survey Confidential . “ Magellan ’s biologists autopsied several of the corpses. The six-legged aliens developed under a star cooler than our own, a K5 stellar type to judge from the construction of their oculars. The second species of dead aliens came from a hotter star, probably one in the F-class. The survivor comes from a star very like our own. In addition, the scientists say the survivor and the six-limbed species have blood chemistry based on iron, same as human. The insectoid had a magnesium-based circulatory fluid. The three could not possibly have come from a single biosphere.
    Human beings and oak trees are more closely related.”
    “So we face a minimum of three star systems and two contending interstellar associations --”
    “Or a single association infested with space pirates.”
    “That doesn’t cheer me up any.”
    “No, Ma’am. Still, there is one bit of good news. They don’t know where we live.”
    “Are you sure? One explanation for their quickness to attack a human starship is that they recognized it for what it is.”
    “The fact that Magellan destroyed the attacker would argue against that,” Bartok insisted. “And if our ship was their target, why were they fighting the other vessel? No, I think we stumbled into someone else’s fight.”
    “How do we confirm or refute that?”
    “Two ways,” Bartok said, holding up a similar number of fingers for emphasis. “If we can learn to talk to the alien, he can tell us what is going on. For that, we will need a good linguist and knowledge of his psychology. We need to establish a baseline sufficient to tell when he is lying to us. Luckily, semantic analysis has developed into quite a science since the two of us were in school. Given time, we will be able to tell when he lies to us merely from analyzing the internal contradictions that creep into his story.
    Luckily, no knowledge of alien physiological reactions will be