“My name is Esro Mondrian. I am Chief of Boundary Survey security. My territory begins half a lightyear from Sol, where it meets the region controlled by Commander Brachis. It extends all the way out to, and includes, the Perimeter. Between us, Commander Brachis and I divide the responsibility for human species security. However, Operation Morgan was my initiative and its failure is my responsibility, not his.

“I have worked in the past with each of your own local monitoring groups, and I have visited your home systems. We are fortunate, all our species, in that we live in stable, civilized regions, where there are few unknown dangers. But out on the Perimeter, fifty lightyears and more from Sol, there are no such guarantees.”

Down in the sunken atrium in front of Mondrian there was an odd grunting sound. It was Dougal MacDougal, clearing his throat. He did not speak, but he did not need to. Mondrian understood the message. Get on with it, man. The Ambassadors didn’t link in from halfway to the Perimeter just to hear platitudes from you.

And yet they had to hear this, whether MacDougal liked it or not. Esro Mondrian hurried on.

“Out on the Perimeter, distances are enormous. But our resources to monitor what is happening out there are limited, and operating uncertainties are large. A few years ago I realized that we were losing ground. The Perimeter constantly increases in size, but our capability was not growing with it. We had to have some new type of monitoring instrument — one that could function with minimal support from the home bases, and also one that was tougher and more flexible than anything that we could make with the pan inorganica brains.