When the dreadnought Hamilcar Barca came out of the inhuman world of plus-space into the blue-white glare of Meitner's Sun the forty men and women of the dreadnought's crew were taut at their battle stations, not knowing whether or not the whole berserker fleet would be around them as they, emerged.  But then they were in normal space, seconds of time were ticking calmly by, and there were only the stars and galaxies to be seen, no implacable, inanimate killers coming to the attack.  The tautness eased a little.

Captain Liao, his lean frame strapped firmly into the combat chair in the center of the dreadnought's bridge, had brought his ship back into normal space as close to Meitner's Sun as he dared - operating on interstellar, c-plus drive in a gravitational field this strong was dangerous, to put it mildly - but the orbit of the one planet of the system worth being concerned about was still tens of millions of kilometers closer to the central sun.  It was known simply as Meitner's Planet, and was the one rock in the system habitable in terms of gravity and temperature.

Before his ship had been ten standard seconds in normal space, Liao had begun to focus a remote-controlled telescope to bring the planet into close view on a screen that hung before him on the bridge.  Luck had brought him to the same side of the sun that the planet happened to be on; it showed under magnification on the screen as a thin illuminated crescent, covered with fluffy-looking perpetual clouds.  Somewhere beneath those clouds a human colony of about ten thousand people dwelt, for the most part under the shelter of one huge ceramic dome.  The colonists had begun work on the titanic project of converting the planet's ammonia atmosphere to a breathable one of nitrogen and oxygen.  Meanwhile they held the planet as an outpost of some importance for the interstellar community of all Earth-descended men.

There were no flares of battle visible in space around the planet, but still Liao lost no time in transmitting a message on the standard radio and laser communications frequencies.  "Meitner's Planet, calling Meitner's.  This is the dreadnought Hamilcar Barca.  Are you under attack?  Do you need immediate assistance?"

There came no immediate answer, nor could one be expected for several minutes, the time required for signals traveling at the speed of light to reach the planet, and for an answer to be returned.