The view tank flickered, clouded and cleared to an overview of the Outer Region. The scale reduced planets, satellites, and stations to the colored pinpoints of light with which they all were long familiar. The computer adjusted to focus on a magnified Plutonian sector. The Uranus and Neptune orbits, although contained within the tank displays, were cut out by the compression. The Slingshot Construction Site rode the rim. "Updating, the latest reports of military construction, commitments and political realignments among the Outer Nations are ominous," Allen said. "They're pledging themselves to each other through mutual assistance pacts and are building military spacecraft, weapons and support systems to back up their agreements." Pointing thoughtfully with his right forefinger at his left palm, Allen updated the military assets of each opposing nation, and correlated its potential capabilities to economic resources over the coming decades and centuries until Slingshot reduced the solar system's deficits. He wove into his analysis the effects of orbital dynamics on normal and spunnel transit times from each Inner and Outer Region point-of-origin to the Slingshot work sites. He moved on to the status of weapons research and development, and identified the locations of the Outer Region's weapons manufacturing sites and military training facilities. "The long-term defense of Slingshot through purely military means," he added, following a deep breath, "especially in protecting our routes and the Log Depot, is, as Jim stated, not possible given the prevailing circumstances. The so-called members of the Independent Nations of the Outer Region are expanding their field of operations, and they get generous support from satellite collectives and individual sympathizers throughout the region. "Our intelligence sources," Allen concluded, "report that many supporters of Plutonian objectives are, themselves, descendants of the insurrectionists that fomented the dissolution of our first interplanetary union. Now, it seems, their intent is to destroy Slingshot, and us as well." Allen Dynal and Jim Selvin glanced at each other; they were not in disagreement. Camari broke the hush that followed Dynal's words. "We are well into an armed confrontation," he said. "Nevertheless, whatever actions we take must minimize destruction to life and property, require no diversions from resources allocated to Slingshot, and in no way restrict Slingshot's construction and launch schedules."