Delos immediately began taping a message to be beamed to them. “This is Dr. Delos of the University of Farcall, chief of the scientific research team on the planet Lunga. We are returning to Lunga aboard a survey vessel. We are unarmed. Our entire complement of crew is scientists and the human named Orion. I repeat, we are unarmed and are returning to Lunga.”
Then we waited to see if the approaching Skorpis cruisers would listen to his message or shoot first and ask questions afterward.
They listened, and I could hear the sighs of relief echoing through the whole ship.
The commander of the Skorpis squadron spoke at length with Delos as the ponderous battle cruisers took up formation all around us. We headed back toward Lunga surrounded by the cruisers, a minnow being escorted by killer whales. It was almost ludicrous.
The scientists seemed tremendously relieved. Only as they gathered around me and thanked me for rescuing them from the Tsihn did I realize how much they had feared being prisoners.
“Those lizards make my blood run cold,” said one of the women. “They don’t have a shred of human decency.”
I thought of the Skorpis and their eating habits and wondered how much political expediency shaped her attitudes. Your alien enemies are inhuman; your alien allies are extraterrestrials.
And beyond them all, beyond all the human factions and the alien intelligent races locked in this interstellar war, were the Creators—descendants of the human race but evolved far beyond human form. Were there other far superior races involved, too? I wondered. Aten had spoken of the ultimate crisis as being something far more catastrophic than this “mere” war in which billions were being slaughtered and whole planets devastated.
I knew that the Old Ones existed, but they wished to play no part in the struggles that ensnared us. Might there be other races, far older, far superior to us? Was that the ultimate crisis Aten and the other Creators feared?
I had scant time to reflect on those matters. We were approaching Lunga again. Now I had to bargain for the lives of my troopers, which meant that the scientists who had just thanked me for saving them would soon be cursing me and trying to kill me.