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"Actually, their relatively low level of development probably makes it more difficult to appreciate the danger we pose, not less so. They don't have the background they'd need to imagine what an antimatter drive could do to the surface of their planet if we chose to turn it on them."

"No," Dalton says. "I guess they probably don't. Still, you'd think that the fact that we descended from the goddamned sky would get us some kind of respect, wouldn't you?"

Neera closes her eyes and sinks deeper into the couch. "Seems like the Assembly beat us to the punch on that front, no?"

Dalton slouches down beside her, but he's too tall to really get comfortable that way. His size was a major asset in navigating the social morass of high school, but if he's being honest with himself, it's really been nothing but a pain in the ass ever since. "Assessor's description sounded an awful lot like a stickman, didn't it?"

"It did," Neera says without opening her eyes. "And if that's accurate, that means this isn't just an Assembly survey ship we're dealing with. Best-case, it's a diplomatic boat with a marine contingent. I guess it's even possible they're straight-up military—and even if not, that's probably who they're hurrying off to fetch."

"Yeah," Dalton says. "Seems likely."

They sit in silence for a while then. Dalton has begun to think Neera's drifted off when she says,"I can't remember—were you with us the last time we ran into an Assembly crew?"

"Nope. Honestly, I've wondered sometimes whether the Assembly was just a boogeyman Boreau was using to keep us in line."

"Right," Neera says."It must have been just after that that our last ground pounder got eaten, and we had to round you up."

Dalton shoots her a look. She's mentioned that his predecessor got himself eaten on the job before. He'd always assumed she was screwing with him, but after standing face-to-...whatever...with the minarch, he's suddenly much less sure.

"Anyway," Neera says,"the Assembly is definitely not a boogeyman. They're one hundred percent real, and they one hundred percent do not like us. So. What would you suggest we do now?"

"Do?" Dalton says. "What can we do? We've done our bit here. This place is clearly a prime target. Now we withdraw and call in the big boys, right?"

"That's what I'd say." She opens her eyes then, and gives him a look that he can't quite interpret."I dunno, though. I get the impression that maybe Boreau's got other ideas."

Over the course of the next hours, then days, then weeks camped in orbit with no attempt at further contact with the minarchs and no preparations for departure, it becomes increasingly clear that Boreau does, in fact, have other ideas. Neera continues her work studying the planet's biosphere and possible resource base, searching for anything with the appropriate combination of value and easy extractability, but Boreau forbids any further use of active scanning, so she's limited to what little can be seen with passive sensors. Dalton, whose engineering background is roughly as useful on the Good Tidings as a Viking shipwright's would have been on a nuclear submarine, has nothing to do at all other than to brood over the increasing implausibility of any possible escape.

The fundamental problem is that they're dangerously deep in the local star's gravity well. Even if Boreau were to fully open the throttle on the ship's antimatter torch, which for reasons of both comfort and safety he never did, it would take them a month or more to achieve a safe jump range, and for that entire time they would be vulnerable to attack. Boreau's ship is a scout, unarmed and armored only well enough to defend against relativistic dust grains, not proton beams and kinetic energy weapons. If the Assembly ship really is military, Dalton can't imagine that they'd survive more than a few seconds into any confrontation—and even if it isn't, from what he's been told about stickmen, a boarding party of one would probably be sufficient to overwhelm the three of them.

On further consideration, Dalton realizes that he has no idea what Boreau would or could do in a fight. He's never seen an ammie do anything remotely aggressive, but Boreau's shell is ten centimeters thick and he masses almost a thousand kilos, so maybe?

He sincerely hopes he won't have to find out.

Six weeks into their vigil, Boreau summons Dalton and Neera to his chambers in the hub. Dalton enters to find Neera already there, clinging to the far wall, while Boreau floats serenely in the center of the hemispherical space, the tip of his great spiral shell nearly touching the ceiling and a single delicate tentacle wrapped around a grip bar set into the floor.

"Welcome, friend Dalton," Boreau rumbles."We are pleased that you have finally deigned to join us."

"Apologies," Dalton says, "but Boreau, you only summoned us twelve minutes ago."