They finally headed for a giant, palatial structure built into the side of the cavern and dominating it and the city skyline. The seat of government, he guessed, probably for the whole hex. Finally he could stand it no longer. “Where’s the enemy?” he asked Zhart.

The other stopped and turned, looking slightly puzzled. “What do you mean?” he asked, not suspiciously but just befuddled.

Marquoz waved a massive arm back in the general direction of the city. “All this. The militarization of the population, the fierceness of the race. All this points to a really nasty enemy. I just wanted to know who or what.”

“There’s no enemy,” Zhart responded, sounding slightly wistful. “No enemy at all. Used to be—long, long ago, maybe thousands of years. You can visit the Museum of Hakazit Culture sometime and see the dioramas and displays about it. But there’s nothing much now. None of the surrounding hexes could live in the radiations of the day, and they’re not up to tackling us even if there was a reason.” He shrugged as they continued walking to the palace.

That was it, of course, Marquoz realized. A warrior people created for a nightmare planet that they had conquered here, thereby proving that they could make it out there in the real universe. But that had been during the Markovian experiment, who knew how many millions of years ago, gone now, done now, leaving the descendants bred for battle but with nothing left to fight.

It would create a strange, stagnant culture, he decided. He understood now what sort of entertainment probably went on at the People’s Stadium, for example.