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censorship!”
    “Nevertheless, that is the way things are going to be. Anyone who divulges a word about the light sail beyond this room will not be allowed to participate in the investigation. Is that clear?”
    The three scientists in the room nodded, grudgingly.
    “Perhaps we should look to our defenses,” Contreras said.
    “Don’t be paranoid!” Hunsacker snapped. “Surely you don’t think they crossed twelve light years of space to attack us!”
    “Who knows what they intend?”
    “How many soldiers do you think one ship can carry, for God’s sake?”
    “How many men did Cortez have?” Contreras replied dryly. “Some of my ancestors thought they could handle him. History proved them wrong.”
    “Not the same situation at all.”
    “Isn’t it? These are refugees from an exploded star. What are they going to do when they discover their chosen refuge already inhabited?”
    “But they must have known this system was occupied before Tau Ceti exploded,” Tory said. “By the late twentieth century, Earth was the center of a bubble of radio noise that stretched more than 70 light years in all directions.”
    “Would an alien have found comfort in twentieth century news broadcasts?” Contreras mused.
    “I tend to agree with Boris,” Pierce said. “This ship has been in space 250 years. They are fleeing the destruction of their star, looking to start over. If we were to abandon Mars, would we fill our vessel with weapons or seed corn?”
    Contreras’ jaw set stubbornly. “Depends on how many potential slaves there were where we were going.”
    “Do we know they are refugees?” Ben asked.
    “That,” Pierce replied, pointing toward the light ring that surrounded the image of Tau Ceti, “is a very persuasive argument. Rather than preparing for conflict with these aliens, I think we should make plans how we can help them. After so much time in space, no telling what shape their ship is in.”
    “Perhaps their life support system has already failed,” Hunsacker responded. “They may all be dead and we are arguing about nothing.”
    “Then who unfurled the sail?”
    “An automatic sequence triggered when the ship closed to within a predetermined distance.”
    “We are speculating in a vacuum,” Praesert Sadibayan replied. “What we need is information, as quickly as we can get it. Obviously, we can no longer send the Starhopper probe out to rendezvous with them. They might mistake it for a weapon.”
    “What other option have we?”
    “I propose that we send a diplomatic mission instead.”
    “You said yourself that Starhopper is the only spacecraft in the Solar System with the ability to rendezvous with the alien,” Tory pointed out. “How are you going to deliver your diplomats?”
    “The probe masses one hundred tons, I believe. We will replace it on the booster with a manned spacecraft of equal mass.”
    Tory nodded pensively. “That might work. Since the alien won’t be here for six years, we’d have time to make the switch.”
    “How long?” Sadibayan asked.
    “Two years.”
    “You’re joking!”
    Tory shook her head. “Look, Starhopper isn’t just any spacecraft. It’s a highly integrated system designed to survive half a century in space and then perform a series of complex, autonomous investigations. You can’t just dismount the instrument package and put a manned ship in its place. There are literally thousands of interfaces to be redone. The main computers are in the instrument package, for God’s sake. Dismounting the upper stage from the booster is equivalent to performing a lobotomy on a human being.”
    “The computers can be transferred to the manned craft.”
    “Sure they can. What about the thousands of distributed processing units that go with them? You also have to remount those and then cobble together the proper interconnections. Then all you have to worry about is the software, which must be completely rewritten.”
    “Surely what you have can be