They searched here and there.  They flittered to and fro, scanning wide bands of the surface of Dara.  The planet’s cities and highways and industrial centers were wholly open to inspection from the sky.  It looked as if the scouts hunted most busily for the fleet of former grain ships which Calhoun had said the blueskins had seized and rushed away.  If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them.

Dara offered no opposition to the ships.  Nothing rose to space to oppose or to resist their search.  They went darting over every portion of the hungry planet, land and seas alike, and there was no sign of military preparedness against their coming.  The huge ships of the main fleet waited while the scouts reported monotonously that they saw no sign of the stolen fleet.  But the stolen fleet was the only means by which the planet could be defended.  There could be no point in a pitched battle in emptiness.  But a fleet with a planet to back it might be dangerous.

Hours passed.  The Wealdian main fleet waited.  There was no offensive movement by the fleet.  There was no defensive action from the ground.  With fusion-bombs certain to be involved in any actual conflict, there was something like an embarrassed pause.  The Wealdian ships were ready to bomb.  They were less anxious to be vaporized by possible suicide dashes of defending ships which might blow themselves up near contact with their enemies.

But a fleet cannot travel some light-years through space to make a mere threat.  And the Wealdian fleet was furnished with the material for total devastation.  It could drop bombs from hundreds, or thousands, or even tens of thousands of miles away.  It could cover the world of Dara with mushroom clouds springing up and spreading to make a continuous pall of atomic-fusion products.  And they could settle down and kill every living thing not destroyed by the explosions themselves.  Even the creatures of the deepest oceans would die of deadly, purposely-contrived fallout particles.

The Wealdian fleet contemplated its own destructiveness.  It found no capacity for defense on Dara.  It moved forward.

But then a message went out from the capital city of Dara.  It said that a ship in overdrive had carried word to a Darian fleet in space.  The Darian fleet now hurtled toward Weald.  It was a fleet of thirty-seven giant ships.  They carried such-and-such bombs in such-and-such quantities.  Unless its orders were countermanded, it would deliver those bombs on Weald, set to explode.  If Weald bombed Dara, the orders could not be withdrawn.  So Weald could bomb Dara.  It could destroy all life on the pariah planet.  But Weald would die with it.

The fleet ceased its advance.  The situation was a stalemate with pure desperation on one side and pure frustration on the other.  This was no way to end the war.  Neither planet could trust the other, even for minutes.  If they did not destroy each other simultaneously, as now was possible, each would expect the other to launch an unwarned attack at some other moment.  Ultimately one or the other must perish, and the survivor would be the one most skilled in treachery.