beleaguered Station and a thin and battered string of Vervani Navy

and Vervani-commanded Ranger ships. The Cetagandans had hit it

once already, been driven off, and now hovered out of range awaiting reinforcements for the next strike. Cetagandan re-supply was

streaming across the Vervain system from the other wormhole.

The other wormhole had fallen fast, the only way to fly from the

attacker's viewpoint. Even with complete surprise on the

Cetagandans' side for their massive first strike, the Vervani might have stopped them had not three Ranger ships apparently

misunderstood their orders and broken off when they should have

counterattacked. But the Cetagandans had secured their bridgehead

and begun to pour through.

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The second wormhole, Miles's wormhole, had been better

equipped for defense—until the panicked Vervani had pulled

everything that could be spared back to guard the high orbitals of the homeworld. Miles could scarcely blame them; it was a hard strategic choice either way. But now the Cetagandans boiled across the system practically unimpeded, hopscotching the heavily guarded planet, in a bold attempt to take the Hegen wormhole, if not by surprise, at least at speed.

The first method of choice for attacking a wormhole was by

subterfuge, subornment, and infiltration, i.e., to cheat. The second, also preferring subterfuge in its execution, was by an end-run,

sending forces around by another route (if there was one) into the

contested local space. The third was to open the attack with a sacrifice ship laying down a "sun wall," a massive blanket of nuclear missilettes deployed as a unit, creating a planar wave that cleared near-space of everything including, frequently, the attack ship; but sun walls were costly, rapidly dissipated, and only locally effective.

The Cetagandans had attempted to combine all three methods, as the

Rangers' disarray and the filthy radioactive fog still outgassing from the vicinity of their first conquest testified.

The fourth approved approach for the problem of frontally

attacking a guarded wormhole was to shoot the officer who suggested it. Miles trusted the Cetagandans would work around to that one too, by the time he was done.

Time passed. Miles hooked a station chair into clamps and studied

the central display till his eyes watered and his mind threatened to fall into a hypnotic fugue, then rose and shook himself and circulated among the duty stations, kibbitzing.

The Cetagandans maneuvered. The sudden and unexpected arrival

of the Dendarii force during the lull had thrown them into temporary confusion; their planned final attack on the strained Vervani must

needs be converted on the fly into yet another softening-up round of hit-and-run. Expensive. At this point the Cetagandans had few ways of concealing their numbers or movements. The defending Dendarii had

the implication of hidden reserves (who knew how unlimited? Not