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there—that line of reflected sunlight right at the edge of the corral.”
    Roman frowned. “ That’s part of the corral? I assumed that was the corral over there.” He pointed thirty degrees further to the left, where the edge of a cylindrical space station was visible in the dim red light. Beside it, the shapes of three space horses could be seen, with a small ship trailing behind each. Couriers, almost certainly; the Tampies had consistently refused the Cordonale’s offer of tachyon transceivers to handle their interstellar communication.
    â€œOh, that’s just the central part of it,” the lieutenant explained. “The Focus, they call it. It holds the administrative offices, quarters for on-duty Handlers, and the medical/scientific study center. The corral enclosure itself extends a good three hundred kilometers further in both directions.” He grinned. “Plenty of room for even space horses to get their exercise.”
    Still frowning, Roman studied the indicated area. Sure enough, now that he was looking for them he could see a few space horses drifting individually around in what looked for all the world like empty space. “What keeps them in, netting mesh?”
    â€œMainly, sir. It’s a double thickness of netting, wrapped around a geodesic support framework that keeps it from losing its shape.”
    Roman squinted at the dim red star. “So what keeps them from simply Jumping out? The fact that they’re at a low gravitational potential this close in to the star?”
    â€œThat’s part of it, sir,” the other said. “Jumps are between equipotential surfaces, and practically any star the space horses can see from here is a lot bigger and hotter. That’s why the Tampies put their corral in this system—the sun is cool but very dense, and any Jump from the enclosure would put the space horse pretty close to its target star. But there’s more.” He did something to the navigational display, and a schematic of a section of netting appeared. “Those nodules—at the framework intersections, here and here—those are the ends of lightpipes. The other ends are connected to lenses pointed outward at particular stars.”
    â€œUh- huh ,” Roman said as understanding came. “So the space horses can look in and see a normal stellar spectrum, but because they aren’t actual stars there’s nothing there for them to lock onto and Jump to. However the hell it is they do that.”
    â€œRight, sir,” the lieutenant nodded. “Also, the fake starlight tends to mask the real stars behind them—sort of an extra bonus. Simple but elegant.”
    Roman felt his lip twitch. Simple but elegant —the standard stock phrase used by pro-Tampies to describe Tampy technology. Simpleminded and primitive was the equally standard anti-Tampy retort. “Well, it obviously works,” Roman conceded. “How’d you learn all this stuff, anyway?”
    The other’s forehead creased slightly. “I asked the Tampies, of course. They’re extremely eager to teach us their ways.”
    â€œProvided one genuinely wants to learn?”
    The other threw him an odd look. “Well, yes, sir,” he said. “You don’t think they’d force their viewpoint down our throats, do you?”
    â€œThey do a fair job of it on the shared worlds,” Roman said, moved by a strange impulse to play devil’s advocate. “Passive resistance is still resistance.”
    It was as if someone had flipped a switch on the lieutenant’s personality. “Yes, sir,” he said, his tone abruptly stiff and formal.
    Roman let the cool silence hang in the air a moment longer. “You know, Lieutenant,” he said, keeping his voice conversational, “a person who can’t understand both sides of an argument hasn’t got a chance of cutting through all the emotion and rhetoric and