With another hiss, the fleetlord poked at the control stud once more. Now the threatening cloud from the nuclear blast vanished. In a way, the image that replaced it was even more menacing. It was a satellite photograph of a base the Race had established in the region of the SSSR known to the locals as Siberia, a place whose frigid climate even the Big Uglies found appalling.

“The mutineers still persist in their rebellion against duly constituted authority,” Atvar said heavily. “Worse, the commandants of the two nearest bases have urged against committing their males to suppress the rebels, for fear they would go over to them instead.”

“This is truly alarming,” Kirel said with another emphatic cough. “If we choose males from a distant air base to bomb the mutineers out of existence, then, will it truly solve the problem?”

“I don’t know,” Atvar said. “But what I really don’t know, by the Emperor”-he cast down his eyes for a moment at the mention of his sovereign-“is how the mutiny could have happened in the first place. Subordination and integration into the greater scheme of the Race as a whole are drilled into our males from hatchlinghood. How could they have overthrown them?”

Now Kirel sighed. “Fighting on this world corrodes males’ moral fiber as badly as its ocean water corrodes equipment. We are not fighting the war that was planned before we set out from Home, and that by itself is plenty to disorient a good many males.”

“This is also truth,” Atvar admitted. “The leader of the mutineers-a lowly landcruiser driver. If you can image such a thing-is shown to have lost at least three different sets of crewmales: two, including those with whom he served at this base, to Tosevite action, and the third grouping arrested and disciplined as ginger tasters.”