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“What’s more,” Iris went on,
“Ronnie and others, myself included, have found what seemed obvious ways to
improve Alliance technology that were completely ignorred. We’ve been making a
fortune on a planetary scale selling just some of what we brought with us or
improved on along the way.”

“And by just being involved with
the Alliance,” Park added, “We have been turning their notions of how to do
things upside down. You’re right. They have become stagnated. The main reason
the Alliance still exists is that it remains the most powerful force in this
part of the galaxy with the possible exception of the Dark Ship aliens. I would
be willing to bet that if the Dark Ships had decided to attack before we woke
up, there would not have been an Alliance to keep the Mer penned up on Earth.”

“Except that the Dark Ship Aliens
appear to be allies of the Premm,” Iris told him. “They might not have attacked
at all had we not woken up and reinvented the star drive. We don’t know
anything about them. It is possible that conquest is not a driving force for
them.”

“Maybe,” Park shrugged. “Do me a
favor and keep an eye on the news while I finish up here?”

“I would do that anyway,” she
assured him. “Should I send Marisea there with your skimmer?” The skimmers were
Mer-built cars that used suspensor technology to smoothly move across any
surface so long as the grade wasn’t too steep. The first few that arrived in
Van Winkletown could only be used by a Mer, having controls one needed a
dolphin-like tail to work, but the Mer engineers soon modified them to be
operated by human feet as well.

“What’s she doing with my skimmer
again?” Park asked. “I thought she had one of her own.”

“That was one of the first ones
here,” Iris explained. It wasn’t really hers, but when there were few Mer
around to use it, she was allowed to keep it most of the time. Our population
is up now and even the older skimmers in the pool are in demand.”

“Remind me to requisition a new
skimmer for my administrative assistant,” Park grumbled, “or maybe just a new
one for me.”

“I understand there are Humvees
still in storage that she couldn’t use at all,” Iris suggested.

“The skimmers have a much
smoother ride,” Park told her. “Yes, have her head on back here. I should be
done soon.”

Marisea showed up a few minutes
later and asked about the new scanner.

“Not sure how well it’s going to
work for us,” Park admitted, “but Ronnie based these on the metal detectors we
used to have in our airports. They work pretty much the same way. A subject
walks through them and if they seem suspicious we have security people pull
them over and do a more thorough search.”

“Sounds like a lot of work for
the security people,” Marisea opined.

“And hopefully not very
interesting work as well,” Park replied. “I just hope we have enough people to
station at these scanners. Security scans back in my day were common, but they
don’t exist on Pangaea. I wonder how visitors are going to react.”

“I doubt they’ll care,” Marisea
replied. “It’s not like this sort of thing doesn’t exist on Owatino. They
probably have them in all the busy ports.”

“They do? We’ll have to lookup
how they work. Maybe we’re reinventing the wheel here,” Park commented.

“How do these work?” Marisea
asked, “I mean, what are we scanning for, specifically?”

“For starters we scan for a suspiciously
high amount of metal,” Park replied. “That was in this rig to begin with. But
we’re also going with the notion that a Premm’s normal temperature is slightly
higher than that of a Twenty-first Century human.”

“Park, this one’s ready to run,” John
Minns, head of Aeropaceport Control announced. “You want the honor of being the
first one through it?”

“Is that an honor?” Park
wondered. “Very well, someone has to be first.”

“Park!” Arn suddenly called from
the other end of the hall. He was walking toward them very rapidly. “Have you
heard what happened in Risto?”

“Just a few minutes ago,” Park
replied. “I understand we’re still waiting to see how the story is going to
twist.” Just then Arn stepped through the scanner. A bell chimed and a bright
red light started flashing. “Back to the drawing board, John?”

“What the hell?” Arn asked.

“It picked up metal, not excess
body heat,” John replied, looking at the read-outs.

“Arn, you just ran the first test
of Ronnie’s Premm scanner,” Park explained. “What’s metal on you?”

“My torc,” Arn replied, “and my
computer pad, I guess. Let me try again without them.” He put the pad down on a
nearby table and then slipped the torc off from his neck. The alarm went off
again on his next pass-through so, he removed his belt buckle as well and then
managed to go through without setting off alarms.

“I’ll pass the results back to
Ronnie,” Park told him. “Seems to me we should be able to attach a small
computer to this thing to discount torcs and buckles.”

“We probably don’t want to rule
out computer pads, though,” John pointed out. “They’re large enough that they
could be the electronics of a bomb or could be used to shield a gun or a
knife.”

“I think I’m the only one who
actually travels with a pad,” Park commented. “And most people from the
Alliance find our torcs to be charmingly antique. They have their
communications and computer terminals implanted.”

“Must make upgrades a major
operation,” Arn commented.

“No, just a minor one,” Park
laughed, “but I understand those implants are a sort of pseudo-life. Upgrades
are programmed into them and they adapt accordingly, using nutrients from their
hosts to do so, or so I understand. I could have gotten an implant while I was
on Owatino, but passed on that. It sounds like they have it down, but I just
didn’t like the sound of it. Besides, each implant is tailored to the
individual and his or her species. I’ll let someone else be the guinea pig for
Homo sap.

“Okay, John, run a few more
subjects through this rig and let Ronnie know about the torc and buckle issues.
It seems to me that she should be able to use some sort of pattern recognition
routine to by-pass known innocuous objects.”

“We need to have another staff
meeting, Park,” Arn told him as they started walking away.

“About what happened in Risto?”
Park asked. “We don’t need a meeting about that unless you’ve forgotten how to
express sympathy and how to condemn the murderer. I’m sure the killer was not
one of us.”

“So am I,” Arn pointed out, “but
how do we prove it?”

“Take the killer apart and
demonstrate he’s not one of us?” Park suggested.

“The killer got away,” Arn told
him. “The method of operations was pretty much the same as what happened to me.
A man, walking down the street, suddenly draws a laser pistol and fires. In the
resulting confusion, he managed to avoid arrest.”

“Too bad,” Park shook his head.
“On the other hand I’m not sure what would be worse; letting the general public
think a human killed a Mer leader or admitting we’ve been infiltrated by the
Premm. The first is bad press for us humans, the second could cause an outright
panic.”

“Neither option appeals to me,”
Arn pointed out.

“Well, prepare a speech that
both
 
condemns the action and offers
solace to the victim’s family,” Park advised, “and broadcast it as soon as
you’re satisfied with it. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

“Huh?” Arn asked. “Why should I
be broadcasting it? I could just send condolences.”

“Arn,” Park replied, “Rumor has
it you’re running for president.”

“Stupid title,” Arn groused. “It
should have been governor just as it has been for the last few years.”

“I wasn’t here,” Park reminded
him, “but
 
it seems to me our dilettante
politicians are taking themselves too seriously. Next thing you know, they’ll
want to address the president as Your Democratic Majesty or something equally
foolish.”

“They wanted the title to be
president so it would rank with the Primes of the Mer,” Arn explained.

“Yeah, I get that,” Park nodded,
“but the Mer had no trouble with you being called ‘Colonel.’ It’s only we silly
humans for whom the actual title was important.”

“And
 
not even
 
all of us,” Arn sighed. “Yeah, okay, I’ll get to work on that speech
right away.” Just then, Arn’s torc chimed. “Hello?” he answered even as
the
 
image of his wife began to form in
front of him.

“Arn!” she sounded desperate,
“Someone just shot Prime Terius!”

Terius, it turned out, had not
actually been shot, but the Prime of the Mer city, Terrimi had been badly
wounded while standing next to Terius while dedicating a new monument to those
who had died during the Dark Ship attacks two years previously.

“They’re both alive,” Iris
reported as soon as Arn and Park had arrived in the Project Van Winkle control
room. “Prime Wilaudor, however, has been rushed to the hospital. There’s no
news yet as to whether he’s expected to live. I can’t get through to Terius,
but then I’m fairly sure this broadcast,” she indicated a screen, “is live and
if so, he’s still being mobbed by reporters.”

There was really no good reason
they had to use the old control room for communications of any sort. Anything
they could monitor in there could have been displayed on a screen or a computer
pad elsewhere in the base, but Arn, Park and Iris had always retreated to the
control room when a crisis came up. The room was both well-shielded from
attacks and had more monitors than any other place in Van Winkletown, but
perhaps the real reason they used it was that the room had never been
declassified and only a handful of people had clearance to enter on their own.
It was a place they could work without undue interruptions.

“I think we had better start
packing for a trip to Terrimi, though,” Iris went on to suggest. “The newsies
are starting to suggest that all humans are to be suspected.”

“Who said that?” Arn demanded.

“None of them have said it that
bluntly,” Iris admitted, “But the implications are that with two attacks by
humans, it must be our fault. You know how reporters are. They have nothing to
report, so they just keep trying to interpret what little they know to fill the
time until something else happens.”

“And not having the common sense
to realize what they’re saying,” Park added, “they just blather on regardless
of how much damage they might be doing. Idiots!”

“Here they are!” Marisea’s voice
filled the room as she opened the door. “I told you they would be here.” She
entered with Patty and Ronnie.

“You guys ought to leave the
comm. channels open in here,” Ronnie told them acidly. “You know the shielding
blocks the torcs.”

“My pad should have relayed any
calls via the base computers,” Park told her.

“Except that someone declared
this ‘Condition Red,’” Ronnie told him. “Outgoing calls only unless you add
callers to the White List.”

“Sorry,” Iris apologized. “I
forgot I had to do that manually. We haven’t had to sit at Condition Red in
over two years and I’ve normally been in space during any such crises.” She
started working at her keyboard franticly. “There. I’ve opened all channels. We
don’t seem to have missed any calls but yours and Patty’s according to the
log.”

“Good,” Arn breathed.

“Arn,” Patty told him. “You
should be working on a speech.”

“So Park keeps telling me,” Arn
replied. “Park you’re more popular than I am, maybe you should make the initial
announcement.”

“I will if you want,” Park
shrugged, “but I’m not the one running for President and I don’t worry about
how the commentators will parse my words. Besides, the first thing I’d expect
commentators to ask is why I was talking and not the leader of the humans? It
would have to be you, Arn, even if this were not an election year.”

“This was so much easier as a
quasi-military base,” Arn sighed.

“You’re the one who pushed the
populace into establishing a democracy,” Park reminded him. “It’s too late to
start wishing you were king again.”

“No, it’s not too late to wish
that,” Arn admitted with a rueful laugh, “just too late to do anything about
it. I wonder if I need to declare martial law, though. No, don’t answer that.
It’s too soon. Had I done so after the attack on me, it might have been
appropriate, but so far there have only been three assassination attempts. This
could be the last of them. I’ll call for increased security and leave the
martial law consideration aside for now. Veronica, did you get the results of
the scanner test?”

“That’s why I’m up here,” Ronnie
admitted. “Park, I can add a program that will do shape analysis, I can even
write it to take a closer look at suspicious shapes before blowing the whistle.
We can scan, not only by X-rays, but in ultrasonic frequencies and take
soundings of the internal structures of suspicious shapes. I’m not sure how
clear an image we can get, though, I’m new to this.”

“Check the Mer computer net for
similar devices, especially those from the Alliance,” Park suggested. “Ask
Sartena and Dannet too for that matter. They probably take this sort of thing
for granted.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ronnie nodded,
“I’ve already called their offices, but I guess everyone is watching the news.
I’ll call again or maybe just knock on the door since both embassies have been here
in the base since the last Dark Ship attacks. But why do you want me to build
each scanner with its own computer? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to just link
it to the network and let the mains handle the data processing? Less likely to
crash too, since we haven’t had any complete down time since we woke up. Sure
one machine might crash, but even the back-ups have back-ups and these
computers are a quarter of a billion years old.”