had seized and rushed away.
If the scouts looked for them, they did not find them.

Dara offered no opposition to the scout-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 they 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 who 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not be withdrawn.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.