Thrr-gilag flicked his tongue in a wry smile. That was Thrr-mezaz, all right. He would be the overprotective worried big brother until both of them were raised to Eldership. Probably even after that. "I'm fine," he said to Chrr't-ogdano. "You?"

" 'Last I checked, I was still here,' " the reply came back a hunbeat later. At least Thrr-mezaz hadn't lost his dry sense of humor. " 'How badly was your base damaged?' "

"Hardly at all," Thrr-gilag said. "It was an extremely precise attack."

" 'They were somewhat less so here. How many spacecraft did they use?' "

"We saw only five fighter warcraft," Thrr-gilag said. "Though there might have been others outside our detection range. Why? Is the number important?"

" 'It could be,' " the answer came back. " 'If we had some idea of how many warcraft the Humans had committed to their search, it might give us an idea of the size of their overall force. Unless they were just checking systems at random and had immensely good luck.' "

"I doubt that was it," Thrr-gilag said. "We know they also looked at Survey World Eighteen. The Diligent and Operant nearly caught that group, but they got away."

" 'Then they must have covered all the likely systems in the area around the battle site,' " Thrr-mezaz concluded. " 'That's a huge number of systems.' "

"Much too huge," Thrr-gilag agreed, frowning. "They must have had some way to narrow the possibilities down."

" 'I concur,' " the answer came back. " 'Unfortunately, that leads to two troubling conclusions. First, that they were able to get extremely detailed readings of our environmental requirements from the survey ships; and second, that they have a detailed catalog of all the systems in this region. I can't see how else they could have limited their search enough to have succeeded so quickly.' "