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familiar with the beds the Minbari favoured, angled at forty-five degrees in the belief that to lie prone was to tempt death to come to the sleeper. Many humans integrating themselves into Minbari society had tremendous problems getting used to these sleeping arrangements, but Shaw never had any difficulty. After a typical day of intense Ranger training, he could never understand those who did.
    ‘Bethall will also give you a quick tour of the Intrepide while we prepare for take-off and leave Minbar. While on duty, and you will always be on duty while you are not sleeping or eating, you’ll man the weapons. Let’s see if your sharp-shooting in a real battle is as impressive as your graduation scores suggest. Any questions?’
    ‘Uh, no, Captain. Sabine.’
    ‘Very well. Bethall, you know what to do. I’ll see you back on the bridge after your familiarisation tour. Feel free to ask Bethall anything. I want you clued up and ready for duty on your return.’
     
    May 14th 2263, EarthDome, Sol
     
    ‘Well, that brings us to the Centauri question once again, Senator.’ President Susanna Luchenko had been sitting in this meeting scheduled for an hour for at least three times that long. The broad windows flanking the conference room looked out on a placid Lake Geneva, set amidst scenery that made her home city of Moscow, for all its majestic architecture, pale in comparison. The advantages to working within EarthDome, the centre of government for the entire Earth Alliance, went beyond the trappings of power. But chairing a meeting of galactic policy was not one of them.
    Senator Wahid, a portly man elected from the Indonesian block, sighed and sat back in his chair. ‘Perhaps, but I have to disagree with Senator Cognomi,’ he said, indicating with a brief hand movement the greying but ever-alert European senator opposite him. ‘It may take years for galactic trade to become stable once more. We have faced wars both here and abroad, and though the ISA promises peace there are just too many interests at stake for stability to continue. I cannot see that we have any choice but to adopt protective trade policies for our industries here on Earth and the colonies.’
    Luchenko pressed an earlier point. ‘It does not matter whether we consider the position of Earth nations alone or our relative position within the rest of the galaxy; the principles of capitalist economics remain the same. A protective trade policy has often led directly to recession in the past. Senator Wahid, we have four hundred years of our own history to demonstrate this.’
    At least,’ agreed the European senator. ‘The Earth Alliance has never seen such a boom in its economy as when we freely opened trade between ourselves and the Centauri Republic. Now that we are blockading the Centauri, under the authority of the ISA, this trade is impossible. All our current economic troubles stem from the cessation of trade between our two peoples. We must lobby the ISA to at least begin opening trade routes between the Centauri and the rest of the galaxy.’
    Senator Wahid shook his head. ‘We gain too much from the ISA. Our fleet has always been one of the most powerful in the galaxy, and the new technologies we are receiving from the Minbari are cementing that position. As for trade, the ISA has opened more doors than it closed, especially among the former League worlds--and in the past we thought we had already exploited the most lucrative opportunities there.’
    ‘That is true as far as it goes, Senator,’ Luchenko replied, ‘but the entire League cannot match the trading power of the Centauri. They cannot even come close. Of all the other governments in the galaxy, the Centauri are most similar to us economically. They also possess a certain pragmatism in such matters that our diplomats have always found easy to work with. Without constant trade between our two peoples, Earth will never regain the position it once had in the galaxy. Indeed, we may find