Among the dark hurtling masses of the Crab Bottom asteroid belt there is little light. The stone giants, formed from unknown explosions and endless wanderings, are smooth, pocked from unknown collisions, worn by the infinite winds of space. Now, they form a wide shield protecting the quiet and remote corners of the region from invasion, trade, discovery, and the oppression of the commercial inter-sytem megacorporations, one Market Under Disney, hollow be their name, as the old song has it.

Among the endless lumpy shadows of this fast moving minefield, one small light suddenly becomes apparent. It is a smoother form, not pocked and grained with millenia of wear but polished, with grains of a fine tight burlwood, following its gentle swallow-like contours. It is the scout vessel of the small Ternian scout force, a lovely small four-man thing, crafted entirely from local hardwoods and protected by a thin transparent shiellding made from local minerals, that is tough enough to stand any impact. Unlike the vessels of the large commercial fleets, its drive is not a DIsney-Ford FLT installation with its mountainous metallic chambers and farings. The Tern people approached the same technological problems from a different direction, more fitting a planet short on metals, long on time, and uncontaminated by the thought processes of the large corporations. It was riven instead by a series of small Ternian crystals installed in a ring of dark mineral matrix around the interior of the stern, which generated carefully tuned frquencies when activated from the control deck forward. The effect of these oscillations was relative spatial translation rather than the forceful linear motion of the ancient Terran rocket system. The technology alone, had it been somehow brought to the markets of known space, would have caused a revolution if it had not been crushed instantly by the alert lords of Ford-Disney.

Alone in the vessel, the agent known as Cornucopia frowned with concern over the message he had just heard. He tapped a series of small polished wood buttons on the control arms of his comfortable leather recliner and activated a communicator which used a similar technique to the drive, by inducing vibrations in a perfectly matched crystal in the Ternian Lomaxion Centre. It was another piece of local engineering genius that discovered the principle -- match the crystals perfectly, to the nanometer, and they will resonate together no matter how far their spatial distance apart.

He had argued for a direct communication link to the Elder's Council, but had been overruled on the grounds of tighter security. He noticed it was time for renewal, and he moved a few delicately carved control arms to the appropriate slots. On the outside of the vessel, a pod drew back, unfolding a shimmering fabric which extended for hundreds of square yards on a complex frame of geodesic lines, growing larger and larger as the tightly folded arms swang out. Praise Bucky, he thought, all systems are staying green and no sign of hostile approaches in any dimension. May it stay that way!

The agent known as Cornucopia settled in his seat while the huge fabric-laden frame outside the vessel gathered ionic dipolar particles in its peculiar mesh. He had time, as all Ternians did, lots of time...