“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.”
Allen Foster joined in. His voice was level and determined, clearly being controlled with supreme effort. “It is impossible to do a random search of the Asteroid Belt—even if we restrict our search to the section where the hidden base must lie. We’ve done the math. We may as well be looking for a black marble hidden at night anywhere in North America.”
“And invisible ships!” Nolan gasped. “The Solar System has no defense against anything like that. Why, they could come in anywhere and invade! They’d be invincible! We couldn’t even see what hit us!”
Commander Lewis spoke up. “And an alien civilization! They could have science beyond what we can imagine. Earth doesn’t stand a chance against an enemy like that!” The men were scared.