“You spend credit like water.” Bright’s hard, middle-aged face leaned toward Donal. “A tithe on the churches, a tithe of a tithe on the church members of our two poor planets is all we have to support the business of government. How much of this do you think we can afford to spend on whims and fancies?”

“War, sir,” said Donal, “is hardly a matter of whims and fancies.”

“Then why shield the grids?” snapped Bright. “Are they liable to rust in the dampness of space? Will a wind come along between the stars and blow them apart?”

“Sheathe, not shield,” replied Donal. “The point is to change their appearance; from the ball-and-hammer to the cylindrical. I’m taking all ships of the first three classes through with me. When they come out before the Exotics, I want them all looking like ships of the first class.”

“For what reason?”

“Our attack on Zombri cannot be a complete surprise,” explained Donal, patiently. “Mara and Kultis are as aware as anyone else that from a military standpoint it is vulnerable to such action. If you’ll permit me—” He walked past Bright to the latter’s desk and pressed certain keys there. A schematic of the Procyon system sprang into existence on one of the large gray walls of the office, the star itself in outline to the left. Pointing, Donal read off the planets in their order, moving off to the right. “Coby—Kultis—Mara—St. Marie. As close a group of habitable planets as we’re likely to discover in the next ten generations. And simply because they are habitable—and close, therefore—we have this escaped moon, Zombri, in its own eccentric orbit lying largely between Mara and St. Marie—”

“Are you lecturing me?” interrupted Bright’s harsh voice.

“I am,” said Donal. “It’s been my experience that the things people tend to overlook are those they learned earliest and believe they know best. Zombri is not habitable and too small for terraforming. Yet it exists like the Trojan horse, lacking only its complement of latter-day Acheans to threaten the Procyon peace—”

“We’ve discussed this before,” broke in Bright.