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realized what had happened, even though the cyborg was too busy saving our lives to take the time to tell me.
    The black starship had done something--something impossible according to any science we knew. The alien starship had done something, and the star was going nova.
     

Chapter Four
     
    (Who knows) what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among the women?
    Dawn Age fragment found at Tel-London,
attributed to Sir Thomas Browne (1603-1665 Old Style)
     
    The actions of the young sometimes seem ill-considered and foolish, but should we not await the judgment of history?
    St. Emeric of Rhada, The Dialogues ,
early Second Stellar Empire period
     
    I had to face the ordeal of a military Court of Inquiry for the “loss” of the black starship, for endangering “by poor astronautical judgment” the life of one Ariane Cyb-ADSPS 339, “a citizen of the Empire,” and--just incidentally--my own.
    There were two captains, three commodores, and an admiral on the board, and they were a grim lot, for all their silver braid and medal ribbons. Alt-Romul, the Altairi Commodore, held out for a full court martial to be conducted at Nyor--which would have made a circus of the whole business. I had my noble ancestry to thank for that suggestion. Alt-Romul is descended from the Interregnal kings of Novorome, a planet subdued (with no great gentleness) by Kier the Rebel in Glamiss Magnificio’s time. So long do our Empire nobles cling to ancient blood feuds.
    Fortunately for me (and, I hope, for the cause of military justice), Admiral the Honorable Morag O’Kane Macdonald had gone to school with the Lady Nora at Tel-Lausanne about thirty years ago, and she spoke for me and put the Altairi inquisitor in his place. It is custom, though not law, in the Empire that any man must face judgment by his peers. And this has come to mean, over the centuries, that a Rhad must be tried in Rhada, just as a Veg would be tried in Great Vega or an Altairi in the Alt Confederacy.
    The court held several sessions at the New Kynan Fleet base, where Ariane was resting, so that she could testify, and I think it was her account of our encounter in Delphinus that saved me. That, and Lady Nora, and the stern-faced old maiden admiral who reminded the noble court of ancient privileges and prerogatives. All women, of course. The men on the board wanted to hang me.
    In the end I received a reprimand for my conduct. It declared that I had used poor judgment in venturing into the black starship, that I had deviated from standing orders for such contacts, and that I had violated Fleet regulations in removing “an artifact” from the derelict. They couldn’t bring themselves to refer to the girl in the life-support capsule as an alien . I was further reprimanded for bringing “the artifact” to Rhada rather than to my Fleet base. But I refused to be dismayed by that part of the reprimand. The alien girl was resting now in the hands of the warlocks of the University of Gonlanburg rather than in some triplesecurity military prison-cum-experimental laboratory, and custom being what it was in the Empire, it seemed unlikely that the government at Nyor would demand Rhada surrender her to them, though an unnecessary number of security troops had now descended on the quiet campus of the Gonlani-Rhad school.
    My trial lasted three weeks, and during that time no attempt had been made by the warlocks to awaken the death-sleeping alien in the capsule. The fluid in which she floated had been analyzed, the systems of the capsule had been studied, and very great number of highly educated men had made guesses about her age and origin--but that was all.
    For myself--well, one would have thought I had enough to worry about, even after the adjournment of the court, so that I wouldn’t keep thinking about the girl in the capsule--but it didn’t work out like that. I spent hours each day thinking about her: trying to imagine whence she had come,