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The usuals had come tonight to partake of Canyontown’s unique form of direct democracy. Ahota, the establishment’s proprietor, was keeping his radical political musings to himself tonight. The tavern-keeper had shoved his manifesto into a jacket pocket, from which a bulky, battered padd protruded. Both Cheveyo, shaman of the local habak, and Powaqa the undertaker seemed uncharacteristically disinclined at the moment to crack crude jokes about the indispensability of their respective professions. Even the usually incorrigible Kolichiyaw, chief executive of the grandiosely named Dytallix-Barsoom Resource Extraction Corporation, was behaving himself.

There was no joy here. Only worry, fear, and an inchoate anger at the growing likelihood that Canyontown’s twenty thousand–strong Hopi/Pueblo population might be displaced by an invader—the very same fate their ancestors had suffered.

I’ll be damned if I’m going to let that happen to us again, Qaletaqu thought, even as he relinquished the floor to his father.

“Kaferia has fallen,” white-haired Katowa intoned. “A merciless and lethal enemy besets us now, my people. An enemy that has exterminated whole human populations whose settlements were in their way. Now this enemy has set up camp a mere spear’s throw away from us.”

Qaletaqu thought his father was being hyperbolic, as was his wont. Twelve light-years, the rough distance that separated the Tau Ceti system from Sol, was a hell of a lot farther away than a “spear’s throw.” Tau Ceti did lay about one-third closer to Sol than Vulcan did, however, which he had to admit was a sobering fact to consider.

Still, Qaletaqu saw it as no reason to cut and run.

“What happened at Tau Ceti only vindicates what all of you have heard me say here many times before,” Katowa continued, spreading his hands before him. “It is only a matter of time before these Romulans come here. And do not make the mistake of believing that they will overlook us. Earth will be their prime target, to be sure, but they must trample over us in order to get there.”

Qaletaqu found his father’s poor understanding of planetary positions and orbital mechanics frustrating; there was no reason to assume that a Romulan invader would necessarily approach Earth on a trajectory that would first take it past Mars, or even across Mars’s orbit. But trying to explain that to Katowa would be an exercise in futility.

“The tribe must relocate to a place of safety,” Katowa said. “We must find a new home, far from the Romulan threat.”

Although Qaletaqu knew how deeply everyone here respected his father as a wise tribal elder, no one appeared happy to hear his words, even in light of the fall of Kaferia.

“Of course,” Qaletaqu said, no longer able to contain himself, “such a home would also be far from the star that warms the bones of our ancestors.”

Katowa seemed unperturbed by the interruption. “And if the Romulans should make it all the way to the inner solar system, as is believed likely by so many heads that are wiser than mine?”

The notion ignited an intense, slow-smoldering anger deep in Qaletaqu’s belly. “Let the damned Romulans come. We can stay, and we can fight, the way our ancestors rose up against the Spaniards nearly five centuries ago. If we have survived this planet’s constant attempts to kill us, then we can survive anything.”

That provoked some laughter, and sparked further debate. They argued, and argued, and argued some more, until everyone in the room seemed to have tired of hearing about the subject. And although the vote the gathering took afterward went decidedly in Qaletaqu’s favor, he had to wonder in the private depths of his heart what might have happened had the vote gone the other way.

And whether any gulf of cosmic distance could be wide enough to protect the tribe from a people as implacably aggressive as these mysterious Romulans.

Grangeburg, Alabama, Earth

“Holy crap!” Charles Anthony Tucker II said a few seconds after he’d picked