1 In this book, customary units of measurement, as well as the twenty-four-hour clock, are used for convenience in visualization. However, Confederation calendar units are used here instead of months.
2 In the Confederation Sector, the year is divided into ten parts, known as deks. Each world has its own calendar based on its orbital period. The Standard Year and Standard Deks, used in interplanetary records, commerce, and Confederation government, are the year and deks of the principal planet, Iryala.
3 Of course, there were the survivors—refugees, our ancestors—who fled early in the rebellion in a fleet of eight large merchant ships, and came to the sector we live in now. But they are not the subject of this work. [Translator]
4 SUMBAA is our Iryalan acronym for Sentient, Universal, Multiterminal Bank, Analyzer, and Advisor—our translation of their name for it. They have their own acronym. We do not know very much about SUMBAA. It was designed to program itself, with the potential for self-expansion, and has grown beyond, perhaps far beyond, the understanding of the people who designed it. And their ability was considerably above that of the empire's present-day computer scientists, let alone our own. [Translator]
5 It seems probable that any one of its fleet combat teams—three vessels working together—could defeat the entire Confederation fleet as now constituted. [Translator]
6 Their weapons too seem generally superior to our own, and apparently their naval armament is far superior. We can expect it to take two to three generations before we will have caught up in the technology of space warfare. If we decide to. First our culture will need to adjust sufficiently to the changes we are leading it through. [Translator]
7 Klestronu adj. Of, pertaining to, or derived from Klestron or its inhabitants.
8 Klestroni noun, plural; singular Klestronit. Persons native to or inhabiting Klestron.
9 Even at the time of this story, the Sacrament constrained them, though in practice it had become an empty ritual. Roughly thirty percent of the people on Iryala, an aging thirty percent, had received the ungelded Sacrament, and in the Confederation sector overall, the percentage was considerably higher. Thus many things could not be said or done openly. Science and research could not be publicly discussed except in the most carefully oblique way. For example, what might more accurately have been called the Bureau of Research and Development was named simply the Office of Special Projects.
To have done otherwise would have been to trigger widespread psychosis and disorder.
10 Made not with intent to kill or maim, but "just to see what would happen." Twelve trainees plus Lieutenant Ghaz and Corporal Toka-Ghit were treated in the infirmary; three trainees were flown to the army hospital at Granite River. All in all a remarkable demonstration of the value of T'swa training.
11 Hyperspace is not actually a space. It is a field enclosing a ship, generated by the ship's hyperspace generator and fully occupied by the ship. In this limited sense, hyperspace is analogous to the warp field enwrapping a ship at sublight speeds, with the additional similarity that in either case the ship has no momentum as gauged against external fields. However, a ship riding its warp field travels through space, while a ship in hyperspace is in a sort of limbo: It can be said to be nowhere. Its field can be said to move, taking the ship with it, but in a sense they aren't moving through anything.
Yet in an equally valid sense it is moving, with a movement that can be quantified and perhaps actually measured—a matter of dispute—through a sort of quasi-topological "reverse side" of real-space. Thus different ships separately "in hyperspace" (more properly in separate hyperspaces) can communicate with each other by simple radio, with the transmission times a complex function of their "hyperspace positions" relative to each other.
Suffice it to be aware that a ship in hyperspace can stop abruptly or turn without inertial effects, though gauged within the specific hyperspace field, inertia is normal.
12 Wisdom, as defined by T'sel masters, is appropriate action, and knowledge of appropriate action.
13 So-called. The new "mapbook" is a computerized holographic atlas 12 X 10 X 1 inches—about the size of the standard army field mapbook. Based on high elevation, computer-enhanced holography, it gives a realistic display of the topography and, at the largest scales, of tree heights. The computer adds contour lines. The broadest vegetation categories are differentiated by color. At larger scales, the classification becomes progressively more detailed, the finer types being outlined and defined by symbols.
14 In the empire, the surnames of nobles have five syllables, with the stress on the first and fourth. Here dh is used to represent the sound of th in the; and c the ch sound in chew. Thus "SAADH-rahm-bah-CHOO-rah."
15 In the Confederation, the calendar year for every inhabited planet begins with the southern hemisphere winter solstice. The southern hemisphere was chosen as the base because Landfall, the original settlement in the Confederation, is in Iryala's southern hemisphere.