“Our battle with the pirates is not yet over, I’m afraid,” continued Richard Starlight. “Their radar bender is nearly perfect. The notion of developing a technique that makes an object invisible to radar is not new, of course, but in spite of several decades of effort even Starlight Enterprise has not been able to achieve the high level of effectiveness Zimbardo’s men have available to them. From these observations we draw two disquieting conclusions. “First, we learned from the pirates we captured on Mars that their base is probably invisible to radar; it can’t be seen with normal methods. It’s likely that the pirates have outfitted _all_ their ships with the device that makes objects invisible to radar, not just the five Steve Cliff observed. If so, their ships can be anywhere without the possibility of any of our bases or centers of civilization being aware of them until they become visible to the eye. Since all our computers track ships and contribute toward strategic battle decisions based on radar data, it is almost impossible to guard against such pirate raids as Zimbardo’s men are now able to carry out--and have already done on Z25.” Richard sighed. “Second, and most alarming of all, it is almost impossible for the pirates to have invented the radar bender on their own. We had surmised this shortly after our first conversations with the captive pirates on Mars, but since then our computer has estimated the chance that they did so to be approximately 0.0001%. That kind of technology is beyond any earthly scientific capability. It is much more likely that they got it from some alien civilization--a highly advanced alien civilization. “We don’t have any solid information other than that, so we can only guess what level of connection there may be between any such hypothetical civilization and the pirates. At any rate, where the radar bender came from, other devices might come too--military devices against which Earth has no defense. And we have no idea when we will learn the pirates’ next move, and we don’t know where the Starmen are now.” The room was silent. Everyone was stunned. When Mars was liberated they had thought that the conflict was at an end. Now they saw that their situation was more desperate than they thought possible. After a moment, Robert Nolan spoke up. His eyes were wide and his voice was high-pitched. “Wh--, what can we do? Can’t we find these pirates? Can’t we just send out ships and comb the entire area of the Belt where they disappeared? Can’t we...?” Keith Seaton broke in. “Robert, believe me, if there were _anything_ we could do, _anything_ we could think of that wouldn’t be the equivalent of running around in circles, we’d be doing it! The Starmen are our sons! Richard informed us last night that they were captured, and we’ve done just about nothing else but try to think of something we can do.”