"Probably," Thane said, "you had a purpose for all this. Before we go any further, let's have it."
"If you were an agent of Candar we would have eliminated you," Pyuf said. "You had already learned too much, and you had shown that you were a dangerous man. If you were a Liaison agent, it was still necessary for you to 'die.' At the moment, it's imperative that no word of our activity gets to the Allied Systems. And, if we can convince you, we badly need your help."
"It'll take some convincing from what's happened up to now. But go ahead."
"Ever wonder," Pyuf went on, "why the Darzent Empire hasn't attacked? What are they waiting for? They're aggressive. They have the edge in power, with two inhabited systems to one in the A.S. Their technology matches ours and their heavily centralized dictatorship allows them to move faster, at least at the beginning of a war."
"Well?"
"Two reasons. One, they never could be sure that we didn't have the second-stage drive. Two, they couldn't be sure of the allegiance of Onzar."
"Onzar—the whole five systems—is probably more of an armed camp than any other political entity in the Galaxy. But that isn't the real reason for their overwhelming importance." Pyuf jumped down off the desk and flipped a switch on the far wall. The galactic map appeared, with the warp-lines superimposed in red.
Pyuf pointed with his cigarette. "Take a look at those warps. All nine of the principal ones, crossing the Galaxy between the Allied Systems and the Darzent Empire, pass within a parsec of Onzar. A faster-than-light fleet going either way has to surface at the Onzar Confluence. And Candar, no matter how he sounds to you or me, is no fool. He, you can bet, has taken some long quiet looks at a map like this and he knows his position. So does Darzent. So do the people who are presumably running things in the Allied Systems."
Thane stood up. He had been off at the perimeter of the struggle, working in obscure but possibly important systems for the past three years. He hadn't been in a position to see all the factors in the struggle that was shaping up. But now at a glance he saw that Pyuf was probably right. "It makes sense," he admitted, "but what about the second-stage drive? Isn't that supposed to cut across warp-lines? Wouldn't that reduce to zero the strategic importance of our friend, Candar?"
At this, Manning Reine broke in excitedly, "But that's just the point, Thane! Remember I mentioned there were certain limits to the second-stage drive. We can, to a large extent, manufacture our own lines. But they are never wholly independent of the existing natural lines through space. Our dependence on the galactic lines varies from almost zero to almost unitary, depending on our position in space. The Onzarian Confluence has much the same effect as a whirlpool. Theoretically, we could force our way out of the whirlpool and go through the center of the Galaxy by a different route. But the energy required approaches infinity."