tever it was,
he liked it; the sounds in the musical Traiti language evoked peace.
When it was over, the room grew quiet.

By Tarlac's inner clock, though, it was still too early to sleep. And
so much had happened that he wasn't sure he could have slept if it were
late for him instead. So he lay there in the dark silence, hands
linked behind his head, and let his thoughts wander.

He had plenty to think about, and not enough solid facts to make any
conclusions reliable. Most of what he'd learned only served to raise
further questions. The Ordeal was the key to the whole thing;
Fleet-Captain Arjen had said as much. And it was dangerous, Arjen
made no secret of that--but how dangerous? Aside from the fact that it
left scars and wasn't universal, he knew little about it. Had they
tested any other humans before deciding to try a Ranger? If so, what had
happened? He had no way of knowing.

Then there was the evident contrast between battle-readiness in men and
ship, and the obvious concern for mental comfort in the ship's
decoration. Being a generalist, not a xenopsych, Tarlac could only
wonder about it. Still, morale was as vital as guns, and he had to
admit that the shipboard art gallery was no more unlikely than the
forested recreation areas on the Sovereign-class cruisers. It was less
space-consuming, as well, though to a ship the size of a battle cruiser
that wasn't really significant. On the other hand, despite their
designation, IBCs weren't purely battle craft, and were often sent on
long-haul non-combat missions. This ship and the others in the Traiti
fleet, from what he'd seen, were warships, pure and simple. If nothing
else, they just didn't have the size to be either multi-purpose or
long-duration.

That made him think. Unless the Traiti were a lot more fragile
psychologically than any human thought, such concern with amenities on
a warship was out of character. They might be more alien than other
evidence indicated--or a lot more aesthetic. He couldn't believe they
were all that fragile psychologically, and his current close contact
was showing less, rather than more, underlying alienness. That left
the last possibility, that these ferocious fighters were also artists.

If there were any parallels at all with Terra, that could be true.
History showed plenty of military men, on any side in any war, who had
expressed themselves through art. Tarlac could think of several
offhand, just from