Terran back when Armstrong and Aldrin had made the first landing on
Luna, but then he dismissed those unproductive if interesting
ramblings. He had work to finish before the ship got back to Luna Base
and he went on to Terra.

Five hours later, Tarlac was back on the bridge. He had no real reason
to be there, but he enjoyed watching the choreographic precision of a
Naval bridge crew, especially this one. He called on the Lindner every
time he needed something with the power of a battle cruiser, and he
praised her highly in the mock-serious arguments Rangers had with each
other about the merits of their chosen ships--even over the performance
of such a simple maneuver as the retrieval of body-return containers.

Tarlac had often wondered about the puzzle those containers presented.
The Traiti had initiated the body exchanges, and nobody could even
guess at the reason. There had been no communication, nothing except
the sudden signal that led to cautious recovery of the first container.
It had been examined even more cautiously, but had proven as harmless
as had all of the later pickups. There weren't many; space battles
left few recognizable bodies. Even ground battles left few, since
hand-held blasters at full power or molecular disruptors literally
vaporized unarmored targets, and if enough of them overloaded an armored
target's screen generator, the resulting explosion had the same practical
effect. Most of the recovered bodies were victims of accident or of
the rare hand-to-hand combat.

The Ranger brought his attention back to the bridge as Olorun reported
ten seconds until out-transition. "Five credits says we're within
fifteen klicks," the young Helmsman added with a grin.

"You're on," Tarlac laughed. "Optimist!"

"We'll see, sir. Out-transitioning . . . now."

There was a moment of silence as the ship re-entered normspace and
stars appeared on the viewscreen, followed by murmurs of dismay.
Captain Willis slapped the General Quarters alarm, swearing briefly but
bitterly. "Damn! It was a trap!" The Traiti violation of something
which had been sacrosanct was almost as shocking as the overwhelming
number of the angular yet graceful Traiti ships.

"When they set up an ambush," Tarlac observed quietly, "it's a good
one. There's enough firepower out there to vaporize us three times
over."

"Yeah," Willis agreed, equally quiet. "Well, let's see how many of
them we can take out with us." She raised