“By his wild pronouncements, this Ussmak sounds like a ginger taster himself,” Kirel said.

“Threatening to call in the Soviets to his aid if we attack him, you mean?” Atvar said. “We ought to take him up on that; if he thinks they would help him out of sheer benevolence, the Tosevite herb truly has addled his wits. If it weren’t for the equipment he could pass on to the SSSR, I would say we should welcome him to go over to that set of Big Uglies.”

“Given the situation as it actually is, Exalted Fleetlord, what course shall we pursue?” Kirel’s interrogative cough sounded vaguely accusing-or maybe Atvar’s conscience was twisting his hearing diaphragms.

“I don’t know yet,” the fleetlord said unhappily. When in doubt, his first instinct-typical for a male-was to do nothing. Letting the situation come nearer to hatching so you could understand it more fully worked well on Home, and also on Rabotev 2 and Halless 1, the other inhabited worlds the Race controlled.

But waiting, against the Tosevites, often proved even worse than proceeding on incomplete knowledge. The Big Ugliesdid things. They didn’t fret about long-term consequences. Take atomic weapons-those helped them in the short run. If they devastated Tosev 3 in the process-well, so what?

Atvar couldn’t leave it atso what. The colonization fleet was on the way from Home. He couldn’t very well present it with a world he’d rendered uninhabitable in the process of overcoming the Big Uglies. Yet he couldn’t fail to respond, either, and so found himself in the unpleasant position of reacting to what the Tosevites did instead of making them react to him.

The mutineers had no nuclear weapons, and weren’t Big Uglies. He could have afforded to wait them out… If they hadn’t threatened to yield their base to the SSSR. With the Tosevites involved, you couldn’t just sit and watch. The Big Uglies were never content to let things simmer. They threw them in a microwave oven and brought them to a boil as fast as they could.